Seeking sanctuary: rethinking asylum and mental health

1. The reliance on Western conceptions of mental health. 2. The investigation, to date, of a relatively narrow range of potential risk factors. 3. The lack of consistency in the measurement and reporting of risk factor variables. 4. The use of the legal term ‘asylum seeker’ to define study populations. We suggest potential ways forward, including using mental health measures developed in collaboration with communities affected by forced migration, the examination of key risk factors around homelessness and workers' rights, the development of a core set of risk factors to be investigated in each study, and defining study populations using the conceptual category of ‘sanctuary seekers’ – people who have fled their country and are asking another country for safety and residence.