Suicidal Ideation and Healthy Immigrant Effect in the Canadian Population: A Cross-Sectional Population Based Study

Rasha Elamoshy and Cindy Feng
Additional contact information
Rasha Elamoshy: School of Public Health, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5E5, Canada
Cindy Feng: School of Public Health, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5E5, Canada

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 5, 1-11

Abstract: Understanding suicidal ideation is crucial for preventing suicide. Although “healthy immigrant effect” is a phenomenon that has been well documented across a multitude of epidemiological and social studies—where immigrants are, on average, healthier than the native-born, little research has examined the presence of such effect on suicidal ideation. The objective of this study is to investigate if there is a differential effect of immigration identity on suicidal ideation and how the effect varies by socio-demographic characteristics in the Canadian population. Data from the Canadian Community Health Survey in year 2014 were used. Multivariate logistic regression was employed. Our findings indicated that recent immigrants (lived in Canada for 9 or less years) were significantly less likely to report suicidal ideation compared with non-immigrants. However, for established immigrants (10 years and above of living in Canada), the risk of suicidal ideation converged to Canadian-born population. Moreover, male immigrants were at significantly lower risk of having suicidal ideation than Canadian-born counterparts; whereas, female immigrants did not benefit from the “healthy immigrant effect”. Our findings suggest the need for targeted intervention strategies on suicidal ideation among established immigrants and female immigrants.

Keywords: suicidal ideation; immigrant; healthy immigrant effect; gender differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/5/848/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/5/848/ (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:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:5:p:848-:d:143089

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().