Referral Strategies for Mental Health Resources

Handing over a number is the part that most often fails, and usually not because the person is unwilling. WHO lists the barriers that show up repeatedly for refugees and migrants: legal status, a shortage of interpreters and cultural mediators, uncertainty about how to register in the system at all, and worry about confidentiality. A phone number answers none of those.

So find out the answers before you pass anything on. Can she be seen in her language, or with an interpreter, and at whose cost. What is the actual waiting time. Does she need a referral from a doctor first, or can she call directly. Does anything she says get recorded anywhere that touches her immigration file, and can you say that with confidence.

Then make the first contact concrete rather than homework. Offer to sit with her while she calls. Offer to make the call yourself with her in the room if she prefers. Fix a time in the next session to check what happened. Not as pressure, as the ordinary way of finishing something you started together.

The confidentiality question is the one that stops people here. Several women have asked me directly whether talking to a psychologist could affect their residence application, and I did not have a good answer.

Then find the answer for your country and write it down, because you will be asked it again. It is a factual question about health record rules and about who can be required to disclose what, and it has an answer that a legal advice service or the health provider itself can give you. Guessing at it, in either direction, is worse than saying you will find out by next week.

One thing to avoid while you do not know: do not reassure. Saying it will be fine, when she is not sure it will be, spends the trust you were about to need. Saying you do not know yet, and coming back with a real answer, builds it.