[10 years of public mental health services for asylum seekers persons in Geneva What balance? Which new horizons?] / Dix ans de soins psychiatriques communautaires auprès des personnes requérantes d'asile à Genève - Bilan et perspectives.

Transcultural psychiatry in the public sector is specifically linked to current political events. The recent ukrainian crisis is an illustration of how massive displacement of refugees can occur. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic had consistently and in many ways weakened the vulnerable population of asylum seekers. These two major events remind us how flexible and reactive our care settings have to be, how much we need to collaborate with our partners in order to maintain creativity and quality in our interventions.

La pratique de la psychiatrie transculturelle en institution se caractérise par un lien constant entre l'actualité mondiale et nos dispositifs de soins. La toute récente crise ukrainienne illustre la rapidité avec laquelle d'importants flux migratoires peuvent soudain être déclenchés. Auparavant, la pandémie de Covid-19 avait déjà fragilisé, par différents aspects, la population vulnérable des personnes requérantes d'asile. Ces deux événements majeurs nous rappellent à quel point nos dispositifs de soins se doivent d'être souples et réactifs et capables de s'articuler avec d'autres partenaires afin de maintenir une créativité et une qualité dans nos soins.

Determinants of Suicidality and of Treatment Modalities in a Community Psychiatry Sample of Asylum Seekers.

A high prevalence of mental illness has been reported in asylum seekers. The present cross-sectional study examined suicidal thoughts, treatment modalities (outpatient crisis intervention, inpatient care), and their determinants in asylum seekers (n = 119) and permanent residents (n = 120) attending the same outpatient clinic in Geneva, Switzerland. The most frequent diagnoses were depressive disorders (64.7%) and posttraumatic stress disorder (34.5%) in asylum seekers and psychotic (55.0%) and depressive disorders (33.3%) in permanent residents. The frequency of suicidal thoughts was similar in both groups (>30%). Asylum seekers benefited from outpatient crisis intervention more frequently than residents did (26.9% vs. 5.8%), whereas inpatient care was less frequent (25.2% vs. 44.2%). In asylum seekers, acute suicidal thoughts were associated with increased frequency of outpatient crisis interventions, and, suicidal thoughts, psychosis, or personality disorders were associated with higher rates of hospitalization. Documenting clinical characteristics and service utilization of asylum seekers is a prerequisite to organizing targeted interventions.

[Evolution in Geneva of institutional psychiatric services for asylum seekers persons]. / Evolution à Genève des soins psychiatriques institutionnels pour les personnes requérantes d'asile.

Recent conflicts in the Middle East and Africa generated the displacement of millions of refugees seeking a safe haven. It led to a transformation in the population of asylum seekers attending our community psychiatry clinic serving refugees and asylum seekers in Geneva. That patient population doubled in a couple of years, comprising a higher number of young men, migrating alone, mostly from the Middle East and Afghanistan. Higher demand on our system and specific mental health needs brought us to transform our setting. We have set up a new evaluation step, we developed outreach interventions, we work more closely with people in the patients' networks and we have dedicated meetings to discuss cases within the team and with supervisors with expertise in working in transcultural settings.

Les récents conflits internationaux survenus au Proche-Orient et en Afrique ont conduit à l'exode massif de millions de réfugiés en quête d'abri. Cela a conduit à une profonde transformation de la population des requérants d'asile soignés au CAPPI Servette. Cette population a doublé en l'espace de quelques années. Les jeunes hommes migrants seuls, provenant majoritairement du Moyen-Orient et d'Afghanistan sont ainsi bien plus fortement représentés. L'augmentation et la modification des besoins en termes de santé mentale de cette population nous ont amené à transformer notre dispositif d'accueil et d'évaluation, à développer des interventions mobiles tout en intensifiant le travail de réseau et en déployant des espaces de supervisions plus spécifiques aux interventions transculturelles.

What are the barriers to access to mental healthcare and the primary needs of asylum seekers? A survey of mental health caregivers and primary care workers.

BACKGROUND: We aimed to assess the opinion of primary care workers, social workers, translators and mental health caregivers who work with asylum seekers about the latter's unmet needs and barriers to access to mental healthcare. METHODS: We used a Likert scale to assess the opinion of 135 primary care workers (general practitioners, nurses, social workers and translators) and mental health caregivers about the proportion of asylum seekers with psychiatric disorders, their priority needs and their main barriers to mental health services. RESULTS: Insufficient access to adequate financial resources, poor housing and security conditions, access to employment, professional training and legal aid were considered as priority needs, as were access to dental and mental healthcare. The main barriers to access to mental healthcare for asylum seekers included a negative representation of psychiatry, fear of being stigmatized by their own community and poor information about existing psychiatric services. CONCLUSIONS: We found a good correlation between the needs reported by healthcare providers and those expressed by the asylum-seeking population in different studies. We discuss the need for greater mobility and accessibility to psychiatric services among this population.

Half a Century of Research on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Scientometric Analysis.

We conducted a scientometric analysis to outline clinical research on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Our primary objective was to perform a broad-ranging scientometric analysis to evaluate key themes and trends over the past decades. Our secondary objective was to measure research network performance. We conducted a systematic search in the Web of Science Core Collection up to 15 August 2022 for publications on PTSD. We identified 42,170 publications published between 1945 and 2022. We used CiteSpace to retrieve the co-cited reference network (1978-2022) that presented significant modularity and mean silhouette scores, indicating highly credible clusters (Q = 0.915, S = 0.795). Four major trends of research were identified: 'war veterans and refugees', 'treatment of PTSD/neuroimaging', 'evidence syntheses', and 'somatic symptoms of PTSD'. The largest cluster of research concerned evidence synthesis for genetic predisposition and environmental exposures leading to PTSD occurrence. Research on war-related trauma has shifted from battlefield-related in-person exposure trauma to drone operator trauma and is being out published by civilian-related trauma research, such as the 'COVID-19' pandemic impact, 'postpartum', and 'grief disorder'. The focus on the most recent trends in the research revealed a burst in the 'treatment of PTSD' with the development of Mhealth, virtual reality, and psychedelic drugs. The collaboration networks reveal a central place for the USA research network, and although relatively isolated, a recent surge of publications from China was found. Compared to other psychiatric disorders, we found a lack of high-quality randomized controlled trials for pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments. These results can inform funding agencies and future research.

A case of non-psychotic autocastration: the importance of cultural factors.

Male genital self-mutilation has been known to occur in psychotic patients. We report a case of premeditated autocastration in the absence of clinical disorder, both at the time of the mutilation and upon follow-up. Coming from a strict Slavic family, this patient repressed gender identity issues for decades. After migrating to Western Europe, his sexual ambiguity became actuated. His motives can be understood in the light of his personal and cultural background. This case shows that cultural factors may contribute to explaining male genital self-mutilation behaviors.