[Asylum Law and Mental Health: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Coaction of Medical and Legal Aspects].

OBJECTIVE: Interdisciplinary analysis of the consequences of laws and legal practice for mental health conditions of asylum seekers and psychiatric care.
METHODS: Based on the case study of a Kurdish woman with complex trauma-related psychiatric disorder, who had been in psychiatric hospital care for 25 months, the legal and medical facts are exposed, followed by a discussion referring to theoretical approaches from medical anthropology.
RESULTS: Immigration laws and legal practice can have harmful consequences, which can be interpreted as "structural violence".
CONCLUSION: In case of traumatized refugees, the coaction of legal and medical aspects has to be acknowledged seriously by the medical, legal and political parts involved. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.