Journal article

Publication year: 2016

Pages: 165-171

Journal: Psychiatrische Praxis

Volume number: 43

Issue number: 3

ISSN: 0303-4259

eISSN: 1439-0876

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0035-1552730

Publisher: Georg Thieme Verlag

Abstract: 

Objective: Interdisciplinary analysis of the consequences of laws and legal practice for mental health conditions of asylum seekers and psychiatric care.

Methods: Based on the case study of a Kurdish woman with complex trauma-related psychiatric disorder, who had been in psychiatric hospital care for 25 months, the legal and medical facts are exposed, followed by a discussion referring to theoretical approaches from medical anthropology.

Results: Immigration laws and legal practice can have harmful consequences, which can be interpreted as "structural violence".

Conclusion: In case of traumatized refugees, the coaction of legal and medical aspects has to be acknowledged seriously by the medical, legal and political parts involved.

Harvard Citation style: Hanewald, B., Gieseking, J., Vogelbusch, O., Markus, I., Gallhofer, B. and Knipper, M. (2016) Asylum Law and Mental Health: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Coaction of Medical and Legal Aspects, Psychiatrische Praxis, 43(3), pp. 165-171. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0035-1552730

APA Citation style: Hanewald, B., Gieseking, J., Vogelbusch, O., Markus, I., Gallhofer, B., & Knipper, M. (2016). Asylum Law and Mental Health: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Coaction of Medical and Legal Aspects. Psychiatrische Praxis. 43(3), 165-171. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0035-1552730