The Mental Health Burden of Immigration Detention: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Abstract

This study provides up-to-date meta-analytic estimates of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of people in immigration detention. The meta-analysis pools nine studies among adults, yielding high prevalence rates of anxiety (64.7 %), depression (73.5 %), and PTSD (46.4 %). Only three studies focused on minors. Even if immigration detention has been extensively criticized, this research area has been nonetheless neglected, especially regarding children and adolescents. Our findings call for an urgent improvement of preventive measures such as screening for mental disorders, access to psychiatric care, and psychiatric care in immigration detention settings to promote early identification and access to treatment.

Keywords

• asylum seeker
• detention
• immigration
• mental health
• migrants
• refugee