Valentina Pettinicchio, Massimiliano Aragona, Estela Camillo Da Silva, Cristina Caizzi, Simona Ciambellini, Marco Mazzetti, Salvatore Geraci

 

In Lazio region, Italy, at the end of 2017 more than 1,000 minors were present. About 95% were males, and three quarters of them were sixteen or seventeen years old. Among migrants, unaccompanied minors are a high-risk population, because they often live traumatic experience, as they are forced to leave their countries without elaborating a migratory project. Since 2011, the immigration scenario in Italy changed starting from the “North Africa Emergency”, which has

modified the routes and the arrivals of refugees because of the war in Libya and the “Arab springs”. This seems to have had consequences on mental health, with data available on adult migrants arriving in Italy.

This paper aims to assess whether a similar eff ect exists among minors, by comparing two groups accessing a care service for intentional trauma victims in Rome, before and after 2011. The analysis was carried out on the medical records of minors who consecutively used the Caritas service “Invisible Wounds” during the period 2006-2011 and 2012-2017. No significant differences were found between the two groups for any sociodemographic and clinical variable (level of education, knowledge of at least one vehicular language, level of knowledge of Italian, number of psychotherapeutic sessions, scores at the Clinical Global Impression Scale of Improvement: CGI-i), nor in the comparison between sociodemographic variables and clinical improvement at the CGI.

 

Keywords: unaccompanied minors, migration, traumatic experiences, mental health

 

 

 

Received on May 15, 2018

Accepted on May 18, 2018

Firstly published online on August 18, 2018