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. 2023 Nov 22;3(1):162.
doi: 10.1038/s43856-023-00385-8.

Migrants' mental health recovery in Italian reception facilities

Emanuele Caroppo #  1 , Carmela Calabrese #  2   3 , Marianna Mazza  4   5 , Alessandro Rinaldi  6 , Daniele Coluzzi  6 , Pierangela Napoli  6 , Martina Sapienza  7 ; UOC Salute Mentale working group; Maurizio Porfiri  8 , Pietro De Lellis  9
Collaborators, Affiliations

Migrants' mental health recovery in Italian reception facilities

Emanuele Caroppo et al. Commun Med (Lond). .

Abstract

Background: Forced migration leaves deep marks on the psychological well-being of migrants, with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychological conditions being prevalent among them. While research has clarified the extent to which pre-migration trauma is a predictor of mental health outcomes, the role of post-migration stressors in the settlement environment are yet to be fully characterized.

Methods: We monitored mental health of a cohort of 100 asylum-seekers during their 14-day COVID-19-related quarantine in reception facilities in Rome, Italy, through the administration of six questionnaires (a demographic survey, the WHO-5 well-being index, the Primary Care PTSD Screen for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-5), the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, the Trauma and Loss Spectrum-Self Report, and the LiMEs-Italian version). Through the combination of statistical analysis and supervised learning, we studied the impact of the first contact with the reception system on asylum-seekers' mental health and sought for possible risk and shielding factors for PTSD.

Results: We find that sheltering in refugee centers has a positive impact on migrants' mental health; asylum-seekers with PTSD reported more traumatic events and personality characteristics related to loss and trauma; life events are predictors of PTSD in asylum-seekers.

Conclusions: We identify past traumatic experiences as predictors of PTSD, and establish the positive role the immediate post-migration environment can play on migrants' psychological well-being. We recommend for host countries to implement reception models that provide effective protection and integration of asylum-seekers, similar to those in the Italian system.

Plain language summary

Traumatic experiences before and during migration can impact the psychological well-being of migrants. This can result in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a disorder in which prior experience of traumatic events can lead to severe anxiety. We asked migrants to fill in questionnaires about their well-being during a 14-day quarantine in reception facilities in Rome, Italy. We evaluated whether the migrants had symptoms of PTSD and the impact of the quarantine on their mental health. We found that migrants who had experienced past traumatic events were more likely to have PTSD, and that staying in a safe and welcoming place in Italy helped improve their mental wellbeing. These findings underline the importance of designing suitable policies to support migrants’ mental health when they arrive in host countries.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Schematic of the data collection and analysis.
We focus on a sample of 100 asylum-seekers in Italy during their first contact with the national reception and integration system, which took place between May 2021 and September 2021 in Rome. In the schematic in (a), blue arrows correspond to migration flows to Italy, which is highlighted in green, whereas red arrows to internal transfers from hotspots to Rome, which is identified by a red square. As illustrated in (b), at their arrival in the reception facilities, the migrants were administered a demographic questionnaire (denoted Survey Q0) and the WHO-5 survey on psychological well-being (Survey Q1). During their 14-day COVID-19 related quarantine before the admission into the Reception and Integration System (in Italian, SAI—Sistema di Accoglienza Integrato), they were administered two surveys for detecting PTSD (namely, the PC-PTSD-5, Survey Q2, and the HTQ, Survey Q3), the Structured Clinical Interview for Trauma and Loss Spectrum (SCI-TALS, Survey Q4) to evaluate the spectrum of the stress response, and the Italian version of the LiMEs checklist of the traumatic experiences and living difficulties encountered before migrating, during the travel, or in the destination country (Survey Q5). At the end of their stay (day 14), the WHO-5 questionnaire (Survey Q6) was administered again to detect variation in the overall psychological well-being, as illustrated in (c). The incidence of PTSD were evaluated from Surveys Q2 and Q3, whereas supervised learning was used to identify the possible traumatic events (Survey Q3) or demographics traits (Survey Q4) that may help predict the insurgence of PTSD, see “Methods” for further details.
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