Emotional and Mental Wellbeing

This chapter assesses the central importance of health, and in particular mental health, to a sense of wellbeing. It considers the factors that negatively impact mental wellbeing of migrant young people not so much in terms of presenting symptoms and biomedical responses, but largely as products of systems and structures that are incompatible with their lives and aspirations. The chapter highlights not only how poor health outcomes are often products of immigration and social care structures, but also how health services are no longer safe, neutral spaces. Instead, in the contemporary hostile environment, health services can act as additional arms of immigration control and surveillance systems. The chapter then discusses the controversial logic in the clinical use of anti-depressants and other drugs to manage conditions that are essentially socially and politically constructed, as well as the incursion of the criminal justice system into the arena of addiction and behavioural disorders.