Psychiatry Research EG

Mental and physical illness patterns vary in differing cultures. The immigrant tends to respond to stress according to the cultures of his childhood environment. The host communitv mav attract a positive or negative selection of the immigrants according to the circumstances prompting migration. The difficulties that the immigrant finds in his new environment frequently result in an increased frequency of mental illness with a relative excess of paranoid and somatic symptomatology. These points are illustrated by examples of immigration to Britain of peoples from Tristan da Cunha Hungary the West Indies and India. Our thanks to Dr. V. Rubin Director of the Research Institute for the Study of Man, New York and to Dr. M. Beaubrun for their valuable help in supplying us with the Census of the Caribbean Mental Hospital conducted in 1960. We should like to thank the Consultant Staff of Bexley Hospital for access to their case material.