News.

In YZ v Secretary of State for the Home Department (HU/51439/2024), promulgated on 24 September 2026, the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) allowed the appeal of a Moroccan national who argued that removal would breach Article 3 of the ECHR because of his mental health. The Home Office had argued in review that the consultant psychiatrist’s reports did not refer to previous negative decisions and lacked objectivity. The tribunal disagreed and found the appellant to be a seriously ill person. He met the diagnostic criteria for personality disorder, PTSD, recurrent depressive disorder with psychotic symptoms, and autism spectrum disorder. The judge accepted and gave weight to the psychiatrist’s opinion that a deterioration in his mental health would lead to a high risk of self-harm and suicide.

The tribunal applied the mental health gloss on the AM (Zimbabwe) test. In mental health cases, the deterioration need not be irreversible in the strict sense. The question is whether removal would foreseeably expose the person to intense suffering, acute relapse, psychotic deterioration, or self-harm or suicide risk. The Home Office’s evidence was heavily criticised. It relied on a 2021 Country Information Note it had not supplied, which in turn cited a WHO atlas that was now nine years old. The appeal was allowed on human rights grounds under both Articles 3 and 8.

This is a First-tier decision, so it does not bind other tribunals. It is still a clear example of how a comprehensive psychiatric report, updated through addenda and left unchallenged on substance, can carry a high-threshold Article 3 claim. The tribunal set out the psychiatric risk factors point by point and relied on them directly. That shows why it matters for the expert to link each risk to the loss of treatment and support on return.