Mental Health and Migration in Previous Research

Abstract

It seems appropriate that before passing on to the description of methodology used and results obtained in this research, we survey briefly some mental health aspects of migration investigated in previous research. Specific problems of methodological procedure will illustrate its limitations but at the same time allow a certain, if restricted, insight and a not always unequivocal, but stimulating, impression of a number of most interesting phenomena. The more frequent tendency to migrate observed among schizoid and schizophrenic personalities, for instance, throws light on the relation between uprootedness and migration and on the significance of personality before migration and that of displacement and isolation, for the incidence of mental illness afterwards. The frequency of paranoic traits in the make-up of mental diseases of refugees has drawn general attention. The incidence of criminality among second and third generations of immigrants has become a well-known fact.