People seeking asylum in the UK can experience profound challenges to their mental health and wellbeing, shaped by a system that is structurally hostile and socially isolating. Many people seeking asylum have already endured trauma prior to arrival. These traumas are then compounded by the asylum process itself. The UK’s ‘hostile environment’ policies have been described as producing a “structural enforcement of loneliness” that particularly targets racialised and marginalised communities (Maguire, 2023; Wells et al., 2024). This context generates or exacerbates high levels of psychological distress, with evidence linking it to elevated rates of self-harm and suicidality among both adults and children seeking asylum (Allsopp et al., 2015).