Migration and schizophrenia: meta-analysis and explanatory framework.

Migration and schizophrenia: meta-analysis and explanatory framework. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2019 Jun 04;: Authors: Henssler J, Brandt L, Müller M, Liu S, Montag C, Sterzer P, Heinz A Abstract Systematic reviews and meta-analyses suggest that there are increased rates of schizophrenia and related psychoses in first- and second-generation migrants and refugees. Here, we present a meta-analysis on the incidence of non-affective psychotic disorders among first- and second-generation migrants. We found substantial evidence for an increased relative risk of incidence among first- and second-generation migrants compared to the native population. As heterogeneity of included studies was high, effect estimates should be interpreted with caution and as guiding values rather than exact risk estimates. We interpret our findings in the context of social exclusion and isolation stress, and provide an explanatory framework that links cultural differences in verbal communication and experienced discrimination with the emergence of psychotic experiences and their neurobiological correlates. In this context, we discuss studies observing stress-dependent alterations of dopamine neurotransmission in studies among migrants versus non-migrants as well as in subjects with psychotic disorders. We suggest that social stress effects can impair contextualization of the meaning of verbal messages, which can be accounted for in Bayesian terms by a ...
Source: European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci Source Type: research