Mental health care in migrant population living in detention centres in Italy

Abstract Background Detention is one of the most powerful social determinants of mental illness: in Europe at least a third of people in prison present one or more symptoms related to psychiatric disorder. At the same time, migration can represent a strong psychological thorn, in particular for people who face traumatic and/or violent migratory experiences and who finally live in host countries in degraded, marginalizing and/or criminalizing contexts. So, for foreign people in prison, mental health problems take on the form of a double burden, which is amplified and correlated with the widespread abuse and misuse of psychotropic drug. Methods This specific double burden requires the analysis of evidence published in the scientific literature and, as far as possible, also the grey literature made up of reports and institutional documents and figures of guarantor of the rights of people in detention. Results From this analysis it will be possible to extrapolate data and evidence on the conditions and mental health outcomes of migrants in Italy in three specific contexts: 1) adult prisons; 2) juvenile prisons and 3) immigration detention centers for forced repatriations. Conclusions Due to the over-representation of migrant people in prison and to their criminalization (“crimmigration”), the Italian prison context is particularly vulnerable for them, with the urgent need for a public health focus on juvenile prisons, where overcrowding associated with forms of drugs addiction that are difficult to manage in the context of juvenile justice, are leading to increasingly significant psychopathological outcomes. Finally, immigration detention centers are under investigations and complaints due to the conditions of degradation, suffering, violence and abandonment in which people destined for forced repatriation live: in this context, mental health issues and psychotropic drugs abuse are not simply due to the pathogenicity of the places, but become a structural part of them.