Immigrants may be at higher risk of developing serious mental health disorders, a major study suggests.
Using data from five countries, the researchers looked at the medical records of nearly 1,000 people who immigrated to another country and compared them to natural-born citizens of the same age.
The team found that immigrants who moved as children or teenagers are twice as likely to develop psychosis, a mental health condition that causes patients to lose touch with reality.
Researchers believe these detrimental mental health effects could be due to the trauma of migration that occurs during crucial times of social development.
A new study found that immigrants are up to 16 times more likely than non-immigrants to suffer from psychosis (pictured: a group of people walking along the US-Mexico border in 2023)
The investigation comes as immigration has become a major topic of political conversation, including former President Donald Trump (pictured) claiming that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were “eating” residents’ pets.
The findings come amid waves of immigrants entering the United States, largely from Central American countries such as Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala, which has become a major political talking point ahead of next month’s presidential election. .
In a presidential debate last month, former President Donald Trump went so far as to claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating” residents’ pets.
Psychosis, which affects about 100,000 Americans, causes hallucinations, delusions and extreme mood swings.
Between 2010 and 2015, researchers from five countries recruited 937 immigrants and 1,195 non-immigrants.
Participants were born in European countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain, as well as other regions such as North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and the Americas.
Most immigrants relocated as adults and nine in 10 had no family history of psychosis.
The team “found that migration at any age was associated with increased odds of psychosis” and “the largest increase was evident for those who migrated during adolescence.”
Overall, immigrants ages 11 to 17 had the highest risk of psychosis among all races.
White immigrant adolescents were twice as likely as their white nonimmigrant peers to develop psychosis, while Asian adolescents were 29 percent more likely than nonimmigrants.
Immigrants from North Africa had the highest risk of psychosis, with an average risk three times higher across all age groups.
The adolescents in this group were the most vulnerable. The researchers found that North African adolescents ages 11 to 17 are 16 times more likely to have at least one psychotic episode than nonimmigrants, and all other age groups in that demographic were at least three times more likely to have an episode.
The researchers noted that adolescents, in particular, may be prone to psychosis due to greater exposure to traumatic events and the loss of friends and other social networks (pictured: Colombian asylum seekers walk through the desert after crossing the United States-Mexico border near Jacumba Hot Springs, California)
However, an important caveat is that North Africans only made up less than four percent of the participants, which could lead to bias.
Black immigrants were also especially prone to these mental health effects, and Black adolescents were more than six times more likely to suffer from psychosis. Meanwhile, infants were three times more likely and adults in this group were twice as likely.
While adults overall were 61 percent more likely than nonimmigrants to have psychosis, they had the lowest risk of all age groups.
The researchers noted that adolescents were particularly prone to psychosis due to several factors. For example, they said teenage immigrants were more likely than adults to experience traumas such as separation from their parents.
And adolescents are more likely than children to have experienced traumatic events such as violence and poor socioeconomic status for longer periods of time than younger children.
Teenagers may also have more difficulty than young children adapting to their new culture, such as learning the language or making friends. Additionally, the team noted that this group is particularly reliant on friends and social networks, and migration would disrupt them.
In terms of race, Latino and Black populations are at the highest risk for psychosis and other mental health disorders due to a higher likelihood of experiencing trauma such as racial discrimination, food insecurity, and police violence.