Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:18:36.567Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Migration and mental health in Canada: can government policy help?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Stephen Kisely
Stephen Kisely*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada, email [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Canada admits more than 220 000 immigrants every year and this is reflected in the statistic that 18% of the population was born abroad (Beiser, 2005). However, government policy emphasises the admission of healthy immigrants rather than their subsequent health. Immigrants do not show a consistently elevated rate of psychiatric illness, and morbidity is related to an interaction between predisposition and socio-environmental factors, rather than immigration per se. These factors include forced migration and circumstances after arrival, such as poverty, limited recognition of qualifications, discrimination and isolation from the immigrant's own community. For instance, in Canada more than 30% of immigrant families live below the official poverty line in the first 10 years of settlement (Beiser, 2005).

Type
Thematic Paper - Migration and Psychiatric Adjustment
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 57 - 59
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 2008

References

Beiser, M. (2005) The health of immigrants and refugees in Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 96, S30–S44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gorst-Unsworth, C. & Goldenburg, E. (1998) Psychological sequelae of torture and organised violence suffered by refugees from Iraq: trauma-related factors compared with social factors in exile. British Journal of Psychiatry, 172, 90–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (1998) Those Who've Come Across the Seas: The Report of the Commission's Inquiry Into the Detention of Unauthorised Arrivals. Commonwealth of Australia.Google Scholar
Immigration Office (2005) Nova Scotia's Immigration Strategy Halifax: Province of Nova Scotia. Available at http://www.gov.ns.ca/immigration (accessed 9 May 2008).Google Scholar
Kisely, S., Stevens, M., Hart, B., et al (2002) Health issues of asylum seekers and refugees. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 26, 8–10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Manitoba Labour and Immigration (2005) Growing Through Immigration: An Overview of Immigration and Settlement in Manitoba. Immigration and Multiculturalism Division of Manitoba Labour & Immigration. Available at http://www.gov.mb.ca/labour/immigrate/infocentre/pdf/mb_settle_present_june05.pdf (accessed 9 May 2008).Google Scholar
Silove, D., Steel, Z. & Watters, C. (2000) Policies of deterrence and the mental health of asylum-seekers. JAMA, 284, 604–611.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Steel, Z. & Silove, D. (2001) The mental health implications of detaining asylum-seekers. Medical Journal of Australia, 175, 596–599.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sultan, A. & O'Sullivan, K. (2001) Psychological disturbance in asylum-seekers held in long term detention: a participant-observer account. Medical Journal of Australia, 175, 593–596.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.