World Mental Health Day: MSF work in Italy with migrant minors
In 1 click, help us spread this information :
Since July 2024, the MSF team working on the 'People on the Move' project has been supporting migrant minors in Agrigento, in Italian island Sicily which receives the majority of people crossing the deadly route of the Mediterranean Sea. The project is being carried out in collaboration with local health authorities.
Many of these children arrive with severe trauma after long and difficult journeys. At the reception centre for migrant children, they receive medical and psychological assistance and a safe place where they can live their lives and their actual age.
Here, they are not defined by the difficulties they have faced, but recognised for their voices, their talents and their dreams.
Every day, the MSF team of intercultural mediators builds bridges between languages and, above all, between cultures and people. Empathy is their most powerful tool: it opens the way to the hearts of young people who have often lost the ability to trust.
"Our intervention aims to bring these young people to a place of balance. They have the right to be minors", says Sergio Di Dato, MSF project coordinator in Agrigento.
Mental health support
The MSF teams in Agrigento run psycho-educational workshops with migrant minors to help them from a psychological point of view: through colours, the young people can express the emotions they feel, learning to recognise and represent them.
Each colour represents a different emotion, and the children colour their hands according to how they feel. Many of them often express their happiness at having survived the difficult journey, but also their fear of being separated from their travelling companions, of not finding work and of not being able to support their families.
"The children carry a very heavy burden. They made the journey as young children and arrived in Italy as teenagers, but already feeling like adults. The opportunity to participate in recreational activities allows them to reconnect with a more adolescent, childlike part of themselves" – Federica Curci, MSF psychologist in Agrigento.
Almost 9,500 unaccompanied foreign minors arrived in Italy in 2025 after crossing the Mediterranean.
Many are fleeing situations of violence and extreme poverty and face traumatic experiences during their journey that require dedicated assistance services.
“With an increasingly fragile reception system in Italy, unaccompanied minors do not always have access to adequate reception centers and the specialized support they need. They cannot be left alone in a system where the protection of vulnerable people and the right to asylum are increasingly precarious,” said Sergio Di Dato, MSF project manager in Agrigento.
MSF's work in Agrigento
In Agrigento, MSF works in reception centers for adults and minors, offering both medical and psychological support.
In one year of work (between August 2024 and August 2025), we carried out over 1,500 medical examinations and more than 500 psychological support sessions. A total of 176 people participated in our psychosocial support workshops.