Transcultural Psychiatry: Refugee, Asylum Seeker and Immigrant Patients over the Globe

Abstract

The number of refugee, asylum seeker and immigrant patients over the globe is growing dramatically, and industrialized countries are likely to receive increasing numbers of people belonging to ethnic minorities in the form of refugees and asylum seekers due to a global increase in social and political instability as well as socioeconomic conflicts. The proportion of people with a serious mental disorder such as PTSD among this population is high. Thus health-care services should prepare themselves to better serve this group of ethnic minorities. They are insufficiently prepared for this specific population of mentally ill immigrants or ethnic minority groups. Particularly, mental health care for refugee, asylum seeker and immigrant patients is lacking, e.g. in cultural competence, intercultural psychotherapy and ethnopharmacology as well as legislation related to access to and utilization of health services, and varies from country to country. Transcultural psychiatry is a discipline within psychiatry, which deals with refugee, asylum seeker and immigrant patients over the globe. This chapter will give an overview on transcultural psychiatry and psychotherapy and future perspectives.