Resilience, mental health and urban migrants: a narrative review

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a narrative review of the literature on mental health resilience and other positive mental health capacities of urban and internal migrants. Design/methodology/approach The methodology for this narrative review included a search of articles published up to 2017. The abstracts were screened and relevant articles studied and discussed. Literature on the particular mental health challenges of urban migrants in India was also studied. References found in the literature relating to neurourbanism were also followed up to explore broader historical and conceptual contexts. Findings Several key sources and resources for mental health resilience were identified – including familial and community networks and individual hope or optimism. Nevertheless, much of the literature tends to focus at the level of the individual person, even though ecological systems theory would suggest that mental health resilience is better understood as multi-layered, i.e. relevant to, and impacted by, communities and broader societal and environmental contexts. Originality/value This paper provides insight into an aspect of migrant mental health that has tended to be overlooked hitherto: the mental health resilience and positive mental health capacities of urban migrants. This is particularly relevant where professional “expert” mental health provision for internal migrant communities is absent or unaffordable. Previous work has tended to focus predominantly on mental health risk factors, despite growing awareness that focusing on risk factors along can lead to an over-reliance on top-down expert-led interventions and overlook positive capacities for mental health that are sometimes possessed by individuals and their communities.

The relationship between protective factors and common mental disorders among female urban slum dwellers in Ibadan, Nigeria

“…This finding corroborates the results from other studies. Coope et al found resilience to be protective of mental health in their review among internal migrants in low and middle income countries and this was also seen by Wu et al in their review among both cross border and internal migrant youth across several countries [ 52 , 108 ]). Our findings of the protective nature of resilience contribute to the literature on the role that resilience might play in the promotion of mental health.…”

Suicide among psychiatric patients who migrated to the UK: a national clinical survey

“…Factors which may confer resilience to adverse mental health outcomes in migrants also warrants investigation. 42 …”

Idioms of resilience: Mental health and migration in India

“…In mental health scholarship, the idea of resilience was pioneered within developmental psychology and studies of stress-resistant children (Garmezy, 1974). Definitions of resilience in healthcare vary, but they usually include three key features: (a) identification of risks or adversity, (b) identification of sources or resources to help offset the effects of that adversity, (c) avoiding the effects of the adversity or adapting positively to it (Coope et al, 2020; Seaman et al, 2014, p. 3).…”

“…While the potential problems of migration and their possible mental health sequelae are widely discussed there have so far been relatively few empirical studies of resilience and internal migration in low-to-middle-income countries. Coope et al (2020) provide a review of the substantive pieces of work to date and discovered through an extensive literature search only 11 pieces of work on the subject, mainly originating from China but with other countries such as India, Sri Lanka and Ghana represented. All of these pieces of work highlight the value of resilience, say it merits further attention, and identify factors including familial and community networks and individual hope or optimism.…”