Migration and psychopathology

Abstract

Given the social and political relevancy that in the last times is receiving the phenomenon, appears in this article a theoretical review of the relation among psycopathology and immigration. Analyzing the variables that influence the above mentioned relation (Genre, language and acculturation, conditions and stages of the migration, cultural differences as for the manifestation of psychiatric symptomatology, etc.) as well as the relative weight of each one of them in different aspects of the psycopathology. In this regard, one presents the integration Theory of Bhugra (2004), which analyzes the interaction among the stages of the migration and a series of factors of risk and protective. Now we´re going to detail the plot lines and the most significant results that the research has offered on psychopathologycal concrete disorders. Of among them, probably the most interesting ones have been the disorders for stress, especially from our country with the formulation of Ulises's Syndrome for Joseba Achotegui, and the psychotic disorders. Of the above mentioned, one presents the evolution in the hypotheses brings over of the relation among schizophrenia and the migration, in spite of which attempts it continues without being sufficiently clarified. It turns out indispensable to place all this boarding in a cultural frame, emphasizing in the modulation that the cultural environment exercises on the psychopathologycal manifestations, and naming some of the syndromes dependent on the culture as they are contemplated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Mental Disorders (DSM). Finally, this analysis is completed by the description of the variables that exercise a protective role as for the negative influence of the migration on the mental health as well as there are mentioned the principal methodological problems which there face the investigators been interested in this topic.As conclusion, is held that, in spite of the vast quantity of available information, it does not seem that may exists a mental specific disorder of the immigrant not that unfailingly the migratory phenomenon takes the psycopathology as a consequence.