Refugees have high rates of various mental disorders. Healthcare services should target refugees' mental health from arrival in the receiving country.

Significant outcomes• Migrant psychiatric patients are more often admitted involuntarily than Danish-born psychiatric patients.• The results were most striking for refugee men and immigrant women.• Migrant patients more often experience compulsory detention, coerced treatment and use of physical force during psychiatric hospitalisation than Danish-born patients. Limitations• Migration status (i.e. refugee status vs. family reunification) refers to only one dimension of being a migrant. The limited size of the cohort did not allow correction for other explanatory factors such as country of origin.• Socioeconomic factors were not considered because the data are inconsistent and of low quality for first generation migrants.• Data on use of coercive measures during hospitalisation were included for a 4-year period only. This allowed limited analysis only.

No abstract

Overall, family reunification migrants had a similar or lower risk of mental disorders compared with native Danes. The results may reflect true morbidity patterns or an underestimation of mental illness due to problems of access to care.