In the first phase of this follow-up study we investigated how the use of more than one language affects mental wellbeing and school achievement among 320 school-aged Finnish-Swedish re-migrant children. Now, in the second phase, we screened the same series of children 6 years after migration for psychiatric and psychosomatic symptoms. Out of five groups distinguished in terms of patterns of language use, two had fared well and three showed evident vulnerability. Both successful groups were marked by consistent use of the two languages, Finnish and Swedish, whereas the risk groups were characterised by mixed use of languages before re-migration or substantial language shift after re-migration.

We examined how remigration influences the prevalence of psychiatric symptoms among children and adolescents in the long term. We investigated depressive and behavioral symptoms in 320 Finnish children and adolescents who moved back from Sweden while of school-age during the years 1984-1985 and in a series of controls. The data were gathered in two phases, with questionnaires sent to the parents, children and teachers in 1986, and with further questionnaires sent to the parents and children in 1992. Depression was measured by means of the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) (8) and behavioral symptoms with the Children's Behavioral Questionnaire, filled in by the teachers (14) in the first phase and by the parents (15) in the second. We compared prevalence of these psychiatric symptoms between the migrants and controls in groups divided by age and sex in the two phases and examined how depressiveness or behavioral disturbance shortly after migration served to predict later psychiatric symptoms. The following findings emerged: The boys who moved before puberty had more psychiatric symptoms than their controls in both phases, while the best-adapted group consisted of the girls who moved before puberty. Those migrant children who moved during puberty had more psychiatric symptoms than their controls only in the second phase. The depressive features and behavioral disturbances observed among the migrants during the first phase did not lead to disturbances in the second phase, whereas an association was found between psychiatric disturbances among the native controls in the first and second phases.

In the first phase of this follow-up study we investigated how the use of more than one language affects mental wellbeing and school achievement among 320 school-aged Finnish-Swedish re-migrant children. Now, in the second phase, we screened the same series of children 6 years after migration for psychiatric and psychosomatic symptoms. Out of five groups distinguished in terms of patterns of language use, two had fared well and three showed evident vulnerability. Both successful groups were marked by consistent use of the two languages, Finnish and Swedish, whereas the risk groups were characterised by mixed use of languages before re-migration or substantial language shift after re-migration.

The purpose of the present study was to explore the morbidity, especially psychiatric and psychosomatic morbidity, of Finnish remigrant children and adolescents who have lived part of their lives in Sweden. The study subjects consisted of 287 remigrants and 305 controls. Hospital admissions in these two groups were analyzed over an eleven year after the study subjects' remigration to Finland. We found psyc iatric morbidity, frequent hospitalizations and infectious diseases to be more common among the remigrants. These findings were consistent with the previous studies on Finnish remigrants from Sweden. rd The hospital admission rates of migrants vary greatly, depending on the physical and social environment in the source country, the migrants' status in the destination country, and the magnitude of the cultural differences between the source and destination countries (Krupinski, 1984;Cochrane and Bal, 1989). However, admission rates are not necessarily related to actual morbidity. Even though migrants may use fewer health services than nonmigrants, their need for services may actually be higher (Krupinski, 1984). The most important problem arising from cultural differences in view of the health care system is the language problem, which impairs the communication between patients and health care staff. Secondly, lack of familiarity with migrants' cultural backgrounds impairs the ability of physicians to provide adequate treatment for certain diseases (Black, 1987). Thirdly, diseases (especially psychiatric disorders) are very much bound to culture, and different cultures have somewhat different disorders and norms of behavior (Weisz et al, 1997).The studies on migrant children's and adolescents' psychiatric hospital admissions are few in number, Munroe-Blum et al. (1 989) found that immigrant children in Canada were less likely to use psychiatric services than nonmigrant children, though they had an equivalent level of need. Studies con- 'We wish 10 thank the Alma and K.A.