Risk of psychosis runs high among traumatised refugees, study finds

Refugees fleeing war, violence and persecution have a much higher risk of developing psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia than people who migrate for economic or social reasons, according to research published on Tuesday.

Researchers writing in the BMJ British medical journal said their findings suggest government healthcare officials in countries taking in refugees should plan to be able to help higher numbers of mental health patients.

Humanitarian crises in Europe, the Middle East, north Africa, and central Asia mean there are currently more displaced people, asylum seekers and refugees worldwide than at any time since Word War Two.

Refugees have a raised risk of mental conditions such as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) - which brings flashbacks and panic attacks and can render patients emotionally volatile - but until now little has been known about the risk of psychosis.

So a team from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet and Britain’s University College London used national register data to look at more than 1.3 million people in Sweden, and tracked diagnoses of non-affective psychotic disorders among the population.

On a per capita basis, Sweden has granted more refugee applications than any other high-income country, the researchers said, and in 2011 refugees constituted 12 per cent of the immigrant population.