Citation

Tinghög P, Al-Saffar S, Carstensen J, Nordenfelt L. Int. J. Soc. Psychiatry 2010; 56(1): 74-93.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0020764008096163

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Background: It has often been shown that immigrants are particularly at risk for mental ill health. The aim of the study was to investigate the association of immigrant- and non-immigrant-specific factors with mental ill health within a diverse immigrant population. Method: An extensive questionnaire was sent out to a stratified random sample of three immigrant populations from Finland, Iraq and Iran. The 720 respondents completed a Swedish, Arabic or Farsi (Persian) version of the questionnaire including the WHO (10) Well-Being Index and the HSCL-25. Results: The results indicate that mental ill health among immigrants is independently associated with non-immigrant-specific factors (i.e. high number of types of traumatic episodes, divorced/widowed, poor social network, economic insecurity and being female) and immigrant-specific factors (i.e. low level of sociocultural adaptation). These results were obtained regardless of whether mental ill health was operationalized as low subjective well-being or a high symptom level of anxiety/depression. Conclusions: These findings support the notion that mental ill health among immigrants is a multi-faceted phenomenon that needs to be tackled within a wide range of sectors — e.g. the healthcare system, the social service sector and, of course, the political arena.