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Study Links Immigrants and Mental Health

Posted on: Friday, 1 December 2006, 00:00 CST

By AARON RUPAR

Immigrants from Asia have lower rates of psychiatric disorders than American-born Asians and other native-born Americans, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Roughly 48 percent of Americans will have some kind of a mental disorder. In our study, less than one in four Asian-American immigrants will have a disorder, said lead author David Takeuchi, a sociologist and professor at the University of Washington.

However, that won't necessarily be the case for their children and grandchildren. If trends continue, rates for them will go up, and that suggests that more investment is needed for prevention programs, he added.

Rates of psychiatric disorders go up the longer that an immigrant remains in the United States due to what Takeuchi calls the immigrant paradox. Whereas the common assumption is that immigrants should have more mental problems due to their lack of familiarity with American culture, in reality the risk of developing mental problems is greater for native-born Americans.

It's part of a larger health issue. For a lot of different health problems, immigrants have a lower risk than native-born folks, Takeuchi said.

Mental disorders in particular are really high in the U.S., while in Asian countries the rates of mental disorders are quite low. It's a sociological and cultural phenomenon, he said.

The study also found different mental-health patterns among women and men, with birthplace the key factor for women and English-language proficiency the key factor for men.

According to the study, Asian-American immigrant women were far less likely to suffer from depression or an anxiety disorder in their lifetime than were U.S.-born women. In addition, immigrant men who reported good or excellent English skills were less likely to have mental-health problems than were those who had poorer English proficiency or American-born men.

The researchers used a questionnaire designed by the World Health Organization to find out about incidents in the past year and over the course of a lifetime relating to depression, anxiety, phobias, post traumatic stress disorder, substance and alcohol abuse and eating disorders.

Researchers interviewed nearly 2,100 native-born and immigrant Asian-Americans who were 18 or older. Participants include people of Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean and Indian ethnicity. The findings didn't significantly vary between the ethnic groups.

This study is one in a series that compares the mental health of various immigrant groups with native-born Americans. Other papers in the American Journal of Mental Health focus on Latino and Black Caribbean immigrants to the United States.

The findings of the studies focusing on other immigrant groups were similar to Takeuchi's. One of the consistent findings is that immigrants have lower rates of mental disorders than native-born Americans across all these ethnic backgrounds, he said.

Takeuchi hopes that this study will help psychiatrists to target mental disorder prevention programs more precisely. Although Asian immigrants who came to America as elementary school-age children reported greater English proficiency, they were also found to be at a greater risk for developing substance abuse problems. This finding suggests that prevention programs are important for the long-term health of children.

Source: United Press International

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