Self-Care in an Interprofessional Setting Providing Services to Detained Immigrants with Serious Mental Health Conditions.

The authors are social workers and lawyers in an interprofessional setting providing legal and social services to detained immigrants in deportation proceedings who have serious mental health conditions. Drawing on direct experience working in the setting, as well as survey responses and feedback from other involved providers, the authors (a) identify barriers to self-care for social workers and lawyers that prevent them from effectively addressing the effects of secondary trauma; (b) propose a relationship-centered framework that, as an alternative to individualized practices of self-care, serves as a way to overcome those barriers; and (c) apply that framework to a case example from their interprofessional setting. The authors advocate for a relationship-centered, recovery-based approach to self-care to manage trauma exposure responses for social workers and lawyers in their specific interprofessional setting and for those working together in similar settings.

Disparities in justice and care: persons with severe mental illnesses in the U.S. immigration detention system.

As the total number of persons held within the U.S. immigration detention system has grown, the number of detained persons with severe mental illnesses has grown correspondingly. Reports issued by the government, legal and human rights advocates, and the media have brought to light a problematic and growing detention system with pervasive legal and mental health care disparities. Described are the structure and funding of the U.S. immigration detention system, the legal state of affairs for immigration detainees with mental illnesses, and what is known about the present system of mental health care within the U.S. immigration detention system. Attention is given to the paucity of legal protections for immigration detainees with severe mental illnesses, such as no right to appointed legal counsel and no requirement for mental competence before undergoing deportation proceedings. A case example and discussion of potential alternatives to detention highlight the need for wide-ranging reform.