Depth Interview I. Interrelations Between General Adjustment and Mental Health

Abstract

A discussion of the findings obtained through computation of the relations between the two dependent variables of the depth interview, general adjustment and mental health, and a score of independent variables will be laid down in the following seven chapters. Chapter Seven will discuss the absolute figures for three degrees of general adjustment (satisfactory, not so satisfactory or not yet satisfactory, and unsatisfactory), and of those for three degrees of present mental health. Then the findings regarding relations between the two dependent variables will be discussed and some initial comments on the meaning of these essential interrelations will be given. The question whether migration necessarily leads to a sense of insecurity touched upon in Chapter Two will be dealt with in connection with these findings. We find that migration need not lead to inner insecurity, if inner security existed in childhood and thereafter before immigration, and that inner insecurity has to be differentiated from a conscious uncertainty which, if not too serious, does not induce inner insecurity and thereby mental ill health. The relations of the two dependent variables to mental health in former periods of life and to sexual life will also be discussed. Four abbreviated case histories of immigrants investigated at the time of this research and again about four years afterwards (see Chapter Twenty-three), will be given at the end of the chapter.