No New Zealand studies have examined community mental health service utilisation by immigrants or refugees or determined the prevalence of the major categories of mental disorder among representative community samples of these people. However, there are some relevant community surveys of psychological distress and disorder
Pernice and Brook (1994) assessed levels of psychological disturbance among community samples of
adult Khmer, Lao and Viet refugees, Pacific immigrants and British immigrants to New Zealand
using translated versions of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist (Derogatis et al 1974). All had been
resident for fewer than 15 years. Clinically significant levels of depression were found in 29 percent
of the refugee group, 18 percent of the Pacific migrants and 8 percent of the British migrants. Similar
levels of anxiety were experienced by the refugee (15 percent) and Pacific (18 percent) samples and
both were considerably more anxious than the British migrants (3 percent). The depression rate for
Indochinese refugees in this study is identical to the rate found by Liev (1995) among Khmer and Lao
refugees during their stay in the Mangere Centre, although he found higher rates of anxiety (32 percent)
using the same questionnaire. The strongest predictors of symptomatology were having experienced
discrimination in New Zealand, not having close friends, being unemployed and spending most of
one’s time with one’s own ethnic group (Pernice 1989; Pernice and Brook 1996a). It has been suggested
that migrants experience a relatively symptom-free or euphoric phase after arrival in the country of
settlement, followed by a crisis period. However, Pernice and Brook (1996b) failed to find support for
this
Cheung and Spears (1992) surveyed Chinese women living in Dunedin using Chinese and English
language versions of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) (Goldberg and Hillier 1979). Their
sample contained similar numbers of local- and overseas-born women. Overall, the GHQ-defined
prevalence of psychological disorder was 21.3 percent, almost identical to that found for Dunedin
women generally. Nevertheless, among the immigrants, those born in China, who had lived in New
Zealand for at least 10 years, who spoke English less than once a week, and whose reason for migration
was ‘family reunion’ or ‘to follow the lead of family members’, had higher mean GHQ scores, indicating
more mental health problems for these immigrants.
Nandula (2008): their measures of acculturation (proxy) were Our main independent
variable was acculturation score.
MESA has information on three crude
proxies of acculturation: nativity, language
spoken at home, and years in the
U.S. Nativity was categorized as U.S. born
or foreign born. U.S.-born individuals
were those who were born in the U.S. All
others (including individuals born in
Puerto Rico) were classified as foreign
born.