We describe the transcultural working method of the Bologna Multiethnic Mental Health Centre (University of Bologna, Italy). The team is composed by psychiatrists, psychologists, anthropologists, social workers and cultural mediators. The main approach is psychotherapy by means of group setting, which is used as for counselling as for longer and more structured psychotherapy.

We carried out a chart review and clinician survey of social, clinical, and service use characteristics of all immigrant patients from 1999 through 2006. We also fulfilled the AMDP -SYSTEM (Manual for the Assessment and Documentation of Psychopathology) for all these patients.

A total of 135 clinic patients was followed up during this period. Most of these patients came from North Africa (32%) and Subsaharian Africa (25%) for financial purposes and 70% were in Italy for less than 10 years. More than ¼ are undocumented. One third of the patients were affected by adjustment disorders, an other third by psychotic disorders and the last third by depression or anxiety disorders. Group setting and helping relation have shown transcultural efficacy, especially during the first period after migration, on psychopathology and adjustment's abilities. This method was effective among every ethnic and diagnostic groups, except for cases in which cultural components, preceding migration, were responsible of suffering.

Starting from therapeutic efficacy of our model, we propose that immigrants psychological distress in Italy is mainly due to cultural shock and role identification loss.