Psychological Distress Among Ethiopian and Russian Jewish Immigrants To Israel: a Cross-Cultural Study

A. Ponizovsky, Y. Ginath, R. Durst, B. Wondimeneh, S. Safro, S. Minuchin-Itzigson and M. Ritsner
Additional contact information
A. Ponizovsky: Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Unit, Talbieh Mental Health Center
Y. Ginath: Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Unit, Talbieh Mental Health Center
R. Durst: Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Unit, Talbieh Mental Health Center
B. Wondimeneh: Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Unit, Talbieh Mental Health Center
S. Safro: Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Unit, Talbieh Mental Health Center
S. Minuchin-Itzigson: Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Unit, Talbieh Mental Health Center
M. Ritsner: Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Unit, Talbieh Mental Health Center

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 1998, vol. 44, issue 1, 35-45

Abstract: A community survey was conducted examining the differences in levels of psychological distress and its symptomatology, comparing 110 Ethiopian-Jewish and 400 Russian-Jewish immigrants to Israel. Psychological distress was measured by the Talbieh Brief Distress Inventory. Russian immigrants were found to be more distressed than their Ethiopian counterparts and this between-group difference can be attributed to the greater relative number of females, older immigrants and those with longer duration of stay in Israel in the Russian sample. The highest levels of distress were observed for paranoid ideation in the Ethiopian sample and anxiety and hostility in the Russian sample. These symptoms were independent of gender and time since immigration. Russians with longer duration of stay demonstrated higher scores signifying adjustment difficulties than their Ethiopian counterparts. These results suggest that the differences in levels and symptom expression of psychological distress are determined, to a considerable extent, by demographic factors (sex, age) and the differing cultural backgrounds of the two immigrant groups.

Date: 1998
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002076409804400104 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:44:y:1998:i:1:p:35-45

DOI: 10.1177/002076409804400104

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().