Do Immigrants Have Higher Risk Factors for Depression Than Non-Immigrants?

Do Immigrants Have Higher Risk Factors for Depression Than Non-Immigrants?
Billy
Bentley University
SO252
Professor Doane
3/25/2019
Globalization has made it easy for people to move from one country to the other. United States has 40 million immigrants and 35 million children who have immigrant parents. One research shows that 24% of the USA population is comprised of immigrants (Filion, Fenelon & Boudreaux, 2018). Therefore, considering the population of immigrant in U.S., it is crucial to understand and hopefully improve immigrant’s mental health issues. Most immigrants experience challenging post-migration issues, such as separation from family, linguistics, cultural barriers and in some cases unwelcoming environments. These factors in most cases exacerbate the existing unstable mentality of immigration, which already put them in a position that are vulnerable to mental disorders. It is indeed evident that immigrants have many risk factors for developing depression as compared to non-immigrants. Immigrants have more risk factors of suffering from depression than non-immigrants due to their prior traumatic experiences, age, employment status, language proficiency, nationality issues, education socioeconomic status, and discriminations.
Age is one of the determinant risk factors for developing depression among immigrants. Children that move to the USA at a young age are more likely to develop depression than adult immigrants. Additionally, English proficiency is also a risk factor that many immigrants have, ultimately resulting in depression and other mental health issues. People that move to United States without English proficiency have major challenges communicating. This is a significant problem especially if they do not have translators or friends that can help them to improve this setback. Some immigrants also experience traumatic events prior to their migration as refugees after experiencing various traumatic events in their home countries such as war or drought. These events cause trauma and increase the probability of these individuals developing depression and other mental disorders. Racial discrimination is one of the greatest risk factors for immigrants to develop depression. A study by Takeuchi (2016) discovered that immigrants from Africa and Asia are more likely to be discriminated against in the USA.
Traumatic events experienced before immigrating can contribute to depression. Occurrences such as political instability, wars, natural calamities and drought in the immigrant’s home countries increase their risk of developing depression. Whenever there are traumatic or disastrous events, some people with the financial ability seek asylum in other nations to get stability and peace. Despite leaving their home countries, traumatic occurrences remain with them and cause psychological stress. In a study conducted in Oslo, it was discovered that migrant women from most Middle East countries such as Turkey and Iran experienced many cases of depression (Takeuchi, 2016). The research signifies the comparison between old and new methods then adopts the latter with more accuracy and trustworthy results. The author find high distress scores among women from the Middle East can be explained by th...