The socio-economic changes of recent decades with the massive migration flows from third world countries and Eastern Europe to the more industrialized nations, including Italy, has led to a need for a meeting point between different cultures and has placed psychiatrists and health services in the position of having to revise their organizational models.

With this study we intend to analyze the mental health needs of non-CEE citizens in the context of a general hospital situation, and assess the impact of current laws.

A revision, made in the period 2006/2010 in SPDC in Campi Salentina, of the admissions and consultancy carried in the Emergency Unit for non-patients was carried out. Patients were divided by geographical area of origin, date of immigration, personal data and clinical diagnoses. The data show an increase of users patients coming from European countries, non-CEE geopolitical areas and North Africa in the first three years.

In the second two years, a reduction of admissions resulted because of a change in legislation. The clinical diagnosis showed a prevalence of clinical features of neurotic and adaptation of substance use for immigrants from Eastern Europe and pathology of the spectrum of mood disorders in patients from other continents. It is essential that the nature of the patient and their disease is considered in the context of socio-cultural dynamics to provide new knowledge, taking into account the size of collective psychopathology using a methodology that integrates the general cultural suffering from whatever country they come from.