Explanations of depression among Irish migrants in Britain

Gerard Leavey, Linda Rozmovits, Louise Ryan and Michael King

Social Science & Medicine, 2007, vol. 65, issue 2, 231-244

Abstract: Irish geographical and cultural propinquity to the UK might be considered as an advantage to migrants. However, research over 40 years shows Irish migrants to have consistent high vulnerability to mental disorders. Only recently have researchers begun to explore the reasons for this morbidity. Taking a previous epidemiological study on depression and Irish migrants as a point of departure, we explored the reasons for this morbidity--we hypothesised that depression may be related to unprepared or spontaneous migration. We report on a qualitative study in order to clarify how, from the migrant's perspective, migration might be related to depression. These perspectives were obtained through in-depth interviews with Irish-born migrants aged 18 and over living in London in order to explore psychological distress through a contextualised 'insiders' account. The interviews were completed with men and women who experienced depression and others who had not. We found that previous theories on Irish migrant psychiatric disorder such as racial discrimination were not supported by the narratives of Irish migrant experience. For many participants, the origins of distress are located in Ireland or in difficult life events and circumstances without a direct relationship to migration. This paper examines the causal attributes to depression among Irish migrants in the UK in the context of pre- and post-migration experiences with particular focus on gender and age.

Keywords: Ireland; Depression; Migrants; Migration; Alcohol; Causal; attributions; Mental; health; UK (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(07)00140-2
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:socmed:v:65:y:2007:i:2:p:231-244

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().