Clinical diagnostics of mental disorders especially among refugees and asylum seekers come with unique difficulties: language barriers, different forms of expression and concepts of the understanding of mental illness as well as a different cultural background. Therefore professional interpreters are needed but associated with a higher effort related to costs and time. We conducted a retrospective analysis of costs, which incurred by the use of professional interpreters in our outpatient clinic in Berlin, Germany, in the first quarter 2016 for the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. The sample consisted of 110 refugees and asylum seekers; the highest costs in the use of interpreters incurred among Neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders (53.04%), especially Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (39.04%), as well as affective disorders (38.47%), especially major depressive episodes (25.23%). Our data point out the crucial need of a regulation of costs with regard to the service of professional interpreters in Germany. © Georg Thieme Verlag KGStuttgart · New York.

Mental disorders Refugees and asylum seekers language barriers

mood disorder Germany Communication Barriers refugee Cost benefit analysis Costs and Cost Analysis economics cost Ethnopsychology cultural psychology health care personnel human communication disorder Refugees statistics and numerical data priority journal Mental Disorders mental disease asylum seeker health care cost Health Care Costs psychology Outpatient Clinics, Hospital outpatient department Article Retrospective Studies interpreter service translating (language) Translating interpreter posttraumatic stress disorder Hospitals, Psychiatric Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic mental hospital Culturally Competent Care transcultural care retrospective study major depression Mood Disorders Somatoform Disorders Berlin neurosis Neurotic Disorders somatoform disorder public health National Health Programs