Why Investing In Refugee Mental Health Makes Economic and Moral Sense.
Originally published in The Doc Suit Debrief.
Imagine one day losing your home, leaving behind everything you know, and having no sense of safety. Then, you are expected to rebuild your life with the traumas you are carrying in an unknown, often hostile, environment. This is the reality for many refugees across the world, affecting not only their wellbeing, ability to integrate, their economic livelihoods, and importantly their mental health. Refugee mental health is not just a humanitarian issue, but is also an economic and moral one. By reframing refugee mental health care as both a moral obligation and an investment in society, we can develop sustainable and scalable models of refugee integration that benefit both refugees and host societies.
The scale of global displacement is huge. There are over 120 million displaced people globally, who have been forced from their homes due to serious conflicts or fear of persecution. Many also face natural disasters due to the impact of climate change. This means that the number of globally displaced individuals is increasing.
This journey is filled with trauma. Refugees face moving away from everyone and everything they know, immense loss, plus a lack of certainty on what their futures look like. It is well documented and known that there is a significant psychological impact of forced displacement, too, with high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety seen within forcibly displaced populations.
Upon arrival in a host country, the mental health impact is not alleviated. There is now further uncertainty on what the future will be like; whether they will be able to find employment or not, navigating a new culture and sometimes also with a new language, facing stigma and hostility from the host society, as well as navigating a long and complex asylum process. There are often financial concerns, a lack of a right to work, abuse and torture from the journey, and poor or unsanitary living conditions. This process can take months or even years, which further prolongs uncertainty and the negative mental health impact of forced migration.
However, refugee camps and official asylum systems are not currently supportive of good mental health. There are significant barriers to accessing mental healthcare, including stigma, cultural, and language barriers. Refugees come in with a lack of trust in the healthcare system, unsure of how much healthcare access they are entitled to, with the worries about settlement and finding employment taking priority. The poor living conditions and inadequate healthcare of the so-called temporary camps that eventually end up becoming long-term housing exacerbate the mental health condition of refugees. More often than not, mental health is not considered a priority in the hierarchy of refugee needs, and any attention given to health is almost always on physical health.
Moreover, governments make minimal investment in mental healthcare for refugees, with most attention given to food and amenities, processing asylum applications, or temporary accommodation. From a health economics perspective, this represents a misallocation of resources. Instead of investing in early interventions such as mental health screening or specialised mental health support, governments spend on reactive measures that don’t support independence or improved wellbeing. This results in poor integration outcomes for refugees in addition to worsening mental health.
Whilst there is a similarity in refugee mental health being under-researched and under-prioritised globally, there are major discrepancies in refugee mental health across the Global North and Global South. In the Global North, the major barriers that refugees face are often bureaucratic, including long asylum application waiting times and temporary, unstable accommodation in isolated parts of the country. Refugees may stay in hotels or detention centers before being granted asylum. In the Global South, which also hosts the majority of the world’s displaced population, refugees could spend years or even longer in overcrowded refugee camps with minimal medical infrastructure. These camps often have very poor living conditions and a higher rate of disease.
Despite the difference in infrastructure and the system, there are similar challenges in both settings. There is mental health stigma and a lack of resources. Moreover, even NGO funding is inequitable, where the Global South hosts approximately 80% of the world’s displaced population, but does not receive the proportion of funding that reflects this, receiving only 8% of development assistance. This is a moral inequity, which causes a long-term impact in society, a loss in potential productivity, and long-lasting trauma.
There is a role for innovation here. It can bridge the divide between need and access. During the UNLEASH program in Rwanda, my team and I worked on addressing the mental health needs of Burundian refugees living in camps. Rwanda, at the time, had only three psychiatrists for the entire country. The solution was a telepsychiatry platform, which was a system that could connect available mental health professionals worldwide to refugee camps via remote consultations. By using mobile technology and trained local facilitators, this solution could deliver psychiatric support without needing a psychiatrist to be physically present in every camp.
This innovation highlights the power of telemedicine to overcome traditional geographic, financial, and infrastructural barriers. Moreover, it can democratise access to care in low-resource settings, as long as it is supported by strong policy and economic frameworks. However, to be sustainable, refugee mental healthcare must be founded on a foundation of compassion.
This article was originally published in The Doc Suit Debrief on December 6, 2025.
Preeti Kaur 