The Challenge of Migratory Flows in the Mediterranean Sea to Psychology: A Single Case Study from a Social Constructionist Perspective

The involuntary migratory flows from Africa to Europe have raised new theoretical and methodological challenges for psychologists who find themselves managing the critical situations of migrants at the borders. Among other factors, the psychological distress experienced by some of them appears to be strongly conditioned by religious beliefs which, in turn, makes it difficult to diagnose and treat them properly according to the tradition of Euro-American psychology. Indeed, the risk is to apply western medical and psychiatric categories to the mental health issues of migrants, missing the meaning that the expressed distress could be acquired within a different cultural framework. The present contribution describes a clinical case developed in a migrant camp in Italy, initially framed as “hallucinatory psychosis”. After the deconstruction of this diagnostic label, a few therapeutic practices will be outlined. These are derived from the Dialogical Self Theory and from the social constructionist concept of Multi-Being, which are considered particularly suitable for understanding psychological distress in a multicultural setting and for planning interventions in troubled situations of involuntary migration.