About 15% of all Moroccans live abroad (4 and a half million), mostly in Europe and North America. For historic reasons, migration of Moroccans went essentially to France, Belgium, Holland, and more recently to Spain. Many of these migrants are well integrated, but many others do suffer from social bad integration. Those with mental disorders are probably those who are most at risk of non-integration.

Mental health workers are not always aware of the cultural background of the Moroccan migrant, including family structure and interactions, religious and traditional beliefs. In France and Holland, and recently in Spain, a few teams are highly interested in transcultural psychiatry and provide care to the migrants and teaching to other mental health professionals. Their number and resources are however far from being sufficient to cover all the field in the entire country. One of the solutions is to develop a teaching program for post-graduates in psychiatry on "Cultural sensitivity" in all departments of psychiatry. A collaboration between mental health workers from the North and the South of the Mediterranean Sea is highly desirable in this respect. This is why the Euro-Med Network on Migration and Mental Health was created in 2007.