Refugees at Greater Risk of Developing Psychotic Disorders, Meta-Analysis Finds

The risk for schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders is higher among refugees than native populations and nonrefugee migrants, suggests areport published today inJAMA Psychiatry.“Refugees do not migrate deliberately but are forced to migrate and have possibly faced traumatic experiences before and during migration,” wrote Lasse Brandt, M.D., of Charité-University Medicine Berlin and colleagues. Migration combined with separation from social networks, social exclusion a nd discrimination, limited access to medical care, poverty, and more may make refugees especially vulnerable to developing mental illness, they added.Previous studies have pointed to migration as a risk factor for developing nonaffective psychoses, such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and schizophreniform disorders. Brandt and colleagues wanted to know how the incidence of these mental illnesses in refugee migrants compared with incidence in both nonrefugee migrants and native groups in a host country.Based on an analysis of nine studies published between 2004 and 2018, which included 540,000 refugees in Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, the researchers found that refugee migrants were 40% more likely to have a first diagnosis of nonaffective psychoses than nonrefugee migrants and 140% more likely than native populations of the host country.“We believe that these findings highlight the need for psychiatric prevention strategies and outreach programs for refugees,” concluded Brandt an...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: immigration migrants psychoses psychotic disorders refugees schizoaffective disorder schizophrenia schizophreniform disorder Source Type: research