With unprecedented numbers of displaced persons worldwide, mental health clinicians in high-income countries will increasingly encounter refugee and asylum-seeking patients, many of whom have experienced significant adversity before and after their migration. This paper presents a summary of the recent evidence on the assessment and treatment of refugees across the lifespan to inform clinicians' approaches to care of refugee patients in mental health care settings. Assessment and interventions for refugees are grounded in an ecosystemic approach which considers not only pre-migratory trauma, but social, familial, and cultural determinants of mental health in the host country. Evidence for psychotherapy and pharmacological treatments are reviewed, highlighting promising interventions while acknowledging that further research is needed. Ultimately, serving refugees necessitates a biopsychosocial approach that engages clinicians as medical experts, therapists, and advocates.

Children and parents seeking asylum are regularly detained in Canada, however little is known about the experiences of detained families. International literature suggests that the detention of children is associated with significant morbidity. Our study aims to understand the experiences of detained children and families who have sought asylum in Canada by using a qualitative methodology that includes semistructured interviews and ethnographic participant observation. Detention appears to be a frightening experience of deprivation that leaves children feeling criminalized and helpless. Family separation further shatters children's sense of well-being. Children's emotional and behavioral responses to separation and to detention suggest that the experience is acutely stressful and, in some cases, traumatic--even when detention is brief. Distress and impairment may persist months after release. Given the burden of psychological suffering and the harmful consequences of separating families, children should not be detained for immigration reasons and parents should not be detained without children.

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Detention, even for brief periods in relatively adequate conditions, was found to be detrimental to asylum seekers' mental health. This adverse impact appears to be largely attributable to the combined effect of two factors: symbolic violence and disempowerment.