Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology
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Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol · Mar 2009
Perceived need for mental health care among non-western labour migrants.
There is a supposed higher prevalence of common mental disorders among many migrant groups. At the same time, problems are reported regarding underutilisation of mental health services by migrants. Since perceived need for care is a powerful predictor of actual care utilisation, we aimed to study the hypothesis that, given the same level of mental morbidity, non-Western migrants would perceive less need for mental health care than ethnic Dutch residents. Additionally, we studied the extent to which needs are met in both groups, as well as several possible barriers to care. ⋯ In case of similar mental morbidity, perceived need for care was lower than among ethnic Dutch. The results did not support the hypothesis that in case of similar mental distress, needs of migrants were less often met than needs of ethnic Dutch.