With about 12 million people, Roma constitute the largest ethnic minority group in the EU. Children from Roma communities are much more likely to be out of school than their peers from majority communities, with a strong impact in global mental health status.

This paper reports the findings of an integrative review conducted to analyze recent empirical and theoretical literature on the factors of school absenteeism in Roma Children.

A comprehensive multi-step search (published 2004–2014) using databases such as SciELOand search engine such as B-on and EBSCO-host was performed. A sample of 8 final research reports met the inclusion criteria and was included in the review. A systematic and interactive approach was used to extract and reduce the data to draw conclusions.

The integrative literature review shows that there are three major groups of factors related to school absenteeism in Roma children – factors related to the children, factors related 8 to the school organization and factors related to the Roma families. These factors exist at the individual, community and institutional levels and are largely consistent with conceptual and empirical framework on mental health vulnerabilities factor’s