Psychological Distress and Its Demographic Associations in an Immigrant Population: Findings from the Israeli National Health Survey

Abstract

The results support the acculturation stress hypothesis as an explanation for psychological distress in immigrants only in immigrants from the FSU, indicating that policymakers should plan services and prevention programmes differentially for different immigrant populations.

Mood and Anxiety Disorders and the Use of Services and Psychotropic Medication in an Immigrant Population: Findings from the Israel National Health Survey

“…58 However, this explanation seems most unlikely because in a previous study, also based on the INHS, we found that immigrants from different countries to Israel between 1989 and 2004 were twice as likely as Israelis to report both mild and severe psychological distress (as measured by the General Health Questionnaire-12). 59 Hence we suggest that treating distressing symptoms with psychotropic drugs may be keeping psychiatric morbidity in the immigrant population at the levels similar to those found in the host population.…”

Trends in dual diagnosis of severe mental illness and substance use disorders, 1996–2010, Israel

“…Therefore, the present study aimed to examine (1) the temporal trends in the incidence of DD of SMI and reported substance abuse among patients, whose first psychiatric hospitalization occurred between 1996 and 2010, and (2) the demographic and clinical correlates of these DD patients. Based on the relevant literature and our clinical experience, we hypothesized that: (1) the proportion of DD amongst all first psychiatric hospitalizations in Israel would increase during the study period due to the increasing prevalence of substance related disorders in the general population; (2) specific population groups (e.g., new immigrants) would demonstrate higher DD rates due to their increased vulnerability, challenges of acculturation and exposure to post-migration stress (Ritsner and Ponizovsky, 1999;Ponizovsky et al, 2009) and (3) involuntarily hospitalized patients would have higher DD rates because they have more episodes of suicidal and violent behavior (Latt et al, 2011) compared to voluntarily admitted patients.…”

Prevalence of Mental Disorders and Use of Services in an Immigrant Adolescent Population: Findings from a National Mental Health Survey

“…Since time since immigration is one of the key indicators of acculturation [36,37], it is not surprising that both generations are similar and do not differ from veteran Israeli population with regard to mental morbidity and service use rates, The higher emotional distress found among immigrant parents [35] may partly explain their attribution of more behavioral problems to their children than parents of Israeli-born peers and significantly less prosocial behavior. However, parental distress or depression was not measured in our study and therefore this explanation is advanced as a hypothesis for future research.…”