UC Davis

Since 2014, children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras unaccompanied by their parents have fled in large numbers to the United States to escape violent crime and social disadvantage. Current mental health policies in the U.S. government's response can be improved based on guidelines from professional psychiatric and psychological organizations. These guidelines emphasize the importance of immigration and culture, raising questions into how the field of cultural psychiatry can offer conceptual frameworks and methods to research unaccompanied minor migration as a humanitarian problem. This paper conducts a policy analysis by reviewing shortcomings in the U.S. response and explores the potential contributions of cultural psychiatrists in optimizing services to address the needs of these children in the U.S. and their countries of origin.