The current very large international migration, which is more and more structural and family-based, is often perceived by local people as something frightening, according to the typical prejudice mechanisms. This aspect of migration and other ones too have been frequently stressed in sociological and psychological studies. Such studies are still valid if we consider the current migration trends. For migrant people the loss of physical and psychical health is the loss of everything, and this is a possible first step not only for their mental disorders, but also for emergency hospitalizations and involuntary psychiatric holds. A strong socio-territorial intervention is required for those migrants who ask for help just when they are on their last legs. More and more accurate studies show that the causes which favour or determine mental disorders are basically the same in migrant and local people. However, as it happens in the case of drug addiction, also in mental disease the social interventions must be combined with the health ones.
Keywords: Migration; prejudice; trans-cultural psychiatry; mental disorders; territory; integration