PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Rehabilitation
This article is part of the Research TopicMigrant Psychiatry: New Cultures in Professional PracticeView all 8 articles
"We Have to Keep Moving": Perspectives on the challenges and opportunities in providing mental health services for People on the Move (PoM) in MSF clinics in Latin America
Provisionally accepted
Maria Laura Chacón1Sonia Brown Da'Silva1
Gladys Vásquez Infante1
Diana Gómez-López1Cindy Lisbeth Morales Sánchez2Hunter Keys2Doris Altuzar1Cristina Romero3Mayner Rodriguez4Jorge Martín1Carolina López Ortiz3Jean Hereu2Altair Saavedra5Mario López-Alba6Reinaldo Ortuño Gutiérrez1
Lindsay Salem-Bango1*- 1Médecins Sans Frontières, Mexico City, Mexico
- 2Médecins Sans Frontières, Guatemala City, Guatemala
- 3Médecins Sans Frontières, Reynosa, Mexico
- 4Médecins Sans Frontières, Danlí, Honduras
- 5Médecins Sans Frontières, Bogotá, Colombia
- 6Medecins Sans Frontieres, Geneva, Switzerland
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Navigating considerable risk and uncertainty, including high rates of violence and recent tightening of migration policies, People on the Move (PoM) in Latin America face significant mental health challenges and barriers to care. From 2021 to 2025, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has provided psychological and psychiatric services to PoM in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama, conducting almost 17,000 consultations since 2024 alone. In our experience, patients face a complex clinical landscape characterized by limited patient-provider interaction time, constantly changing health systems, and inconsistent referral and medication availability, among other challenges. The urgent need to meet basic survival and protection needs often delays attention to mental health. The highly diverse patient population, both from the region and beyond, requires ongoing adaptation to different languages, cultures, and precipitating events and circumstances. In response, MSF adapts a holistic care package including single, brief therapy sessions; group psychoeducation sessions; pediatric recreational activities; cultural mediators; travel kits with psychiatric medication; and trainings for local providers through the Mental Health Gap Action Programme. Additionally, holistic care integrates mental health services with general medical care and social services, while telehealth and digital health promotion enable providers to reach PoM beyond in-person consults. Recent migration policy changes and funding cuts threaten to exacerbate both the mental health of PoM and barriers in service delivery. Ongoing innovation and adaption are essential to support mental health of PoM in a context of evolving and often punitive regional migration policies.
Keywords: Health Care, Latin America, Mental Health, migrant, People on the move, Psychiatric services, psychological services, Violence
Received: 31 Oct 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Chacón, Brown Da'Silva, Vásquez Infante, Gómez-López, Morales Sánchez, Keys, Altuzar, Romero, Rodriguez, Martín, López Ortiz, Hereu, Saavedra, López-Alba, Ortuño Gutiérrez and Salem-Bango. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lindsay Salem-Bango
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