Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T00:46:32.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Measuring psychiatric disorder among Southeast Asian refugees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Morton Beiser*
Affiliation:
Division of Social and Cultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Canada
Jonathan A. E. Fleming
Affiliation:
Division of Social and Cultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Canada
*
1Address for correspondence: Dr Morton Beiser, Refugee Resettlement Project, Division of Social and Cultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, 2255 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 2A1.

Synopsis

Four measures of mental health – Panic, Depression, Somatization and Well-Being – have been developed for use in a population of Southeast Asian refugees. The scales, a product of work with 1348 refugees, demonstrate conceptual significance, good reliability, concurrent validity and stability of structure across samples. They are culturally sensitive, enabling intra-cultural study as well as screening for clinical purposes. The measures also permit comparisons, for research purposes, with non-Asians.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beiser, M. (1984). Refugee mental health in the early years of resettlement. In Refugee Resettlement: Southeast Asians in Transition (ed. Nann, R. C., Johnson, P. J. and Beiser, M.), pp. 7180. U.B.C. Refugee Resettlement Project: Vancouver, B.C.Google Scholar
Beiser, M. (1985). A study of depression among traditional Africans, urban North Americans and Southeast Asian refugees. In Culture and Depression (ed. Kleinman, A. and Good, B. J.), pp. 272298. University of California Press: Berkeley.Google Scholar
Beiser, M. & Leighton, A. H. (1976). Personality assets and mental health. In Explorations in Social Psychiatry (ed. Kaplan, B. H.), pp. 178194. Basic Books: New York.Google Scholar
Beiser, M., Ravel, J.-L., Collomb, H. & Egelhoff, C. (1972 a). Assessing psychiatric disorder among the Serer of Senegal. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 154, 141151.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beiser, M., Burr, W. A., Ravel, J.-L. & Collomb, H. (1972 b). Illness of the spirit among the Serer of Senegal. American Journal of Psychiatry 27, 545549.Google Scholar
Beiser, M., Benfari, R. C., Collomb, H. & Ravel, J.-L. (1976). Measuring psychoneurotic behaviour in cross-cultural surveys. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 163, 1023.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berry, J. W. & Blondel, T. (1982). Psychological adaptation of Vietnamese refugees in Canada. Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health 1, 8188.Google Scholar
Bradburn, N. M. (1969). The Structure of Psychological Well-Being. Aldine: Chicago.Google Scholar
Brislin, R. W. (1970). Back-translation for cross-cultural research. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 1, 195216.Google Scholar
Bromet, E. J. (1985). An epidemiological approach to disaster research.Presented at the Annual Meeting, American Psychiatric Association,May,Dallas, Texas.Google Scholar
Chan, D. W. (1985). The Chinese version of the General Health Questionnaire: does language make a difference? Psychological Medicine 15, 147155.Google Scholar
Cohen, P. & Cohen, J. (1984). The clinician's illusion. Archives of General Psychiatry 41, 11781182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eisenberg, L. (1984). The epidemiology of suicide in adolescents. Pediatric Annals 13, 4753.Google ScholarPubMed
Goldberg, D. P. (1978). Manual of the General Health Questionnaire. NFER: London.Google Scholar
Gorsuch, G. L. (1974). Factor Analysis. W. B. Saunders: Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Harding, T. W., DeArango, M. V., Baltazar, J., Climent, C. E., Ibrahim, H. H. A., Ladrido-Ignacio, L., Srinivasa Murthy, R. & Wig, N. N. (1980). Mental disorders in primary health care: a study of their frequency and diagnosis in four developing countries. Psychological Medicine 10, 231241.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hirschfield, R. & Cross, C. K. (1982). Epidemiology of affective disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry 39, 3546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katon, W., Kleinman, A. & Rosen, G. (1982). Depression and somatization: a review. (Part I). American Journal of Medicine 72. 127135.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kinzie, J. D. & Manson, S. M. (1983). Five years' experience with Indochinese refugee psychiatric patients. Journal of Operational Psychiatry 14, 105111.Google Scholar
Kinzie, J. D., Manson, S. M., Vinh, D. T., Tolan, N. T., Anh, B. & Pho, T. N. (1982). Development and validation of Vietnamese language depression rating scale. American Journal of Psychiatry 139, 12761281.Google Scholar
Kleinman, A. (1980). Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture. University of California Press: Berkeley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleinman, A. & Good, B. J. (eds.) (1985). Culture and Depression. Studies in the Anthropology and Cross-cultural Psychiatry of Affect and Disorder. University of California Press: Berkeley.Google Scholar
Klerman, G. L., Lavori, P. W., Rice, J., Reich, T., Endicott, J., Andreasen, N. C., Keller, M. B. & Hirschfield, R. M. A. (1985). Birth cohort trends in rates of major depressive disorder among relatives of patients with affective disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry 42, 723724.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krupinski, J., Stoller, A. & Wallace, L. (1973). Psychiatric disorders in eastern European refugees now in Australia. Social Science and Medicine 7, 3145.Google Scholar
Leaf, P. J., Weissman, M. M., Myers, J. K., Tischler, G. L. & Holzer, C. E. (1984). Social factors related to psychiatric disorder: the Yale Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study. Social Psychiatry 19, 5361.Google Scholar
Leff, J. P. (1977). The cross-cultural study of emotions. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 1, 317350.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leff, J. P. (1973). Culture and the differentiation of emotional states. British Journal of Psychiatry 123, 299306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lin, K. M., Tazuma, L. & Masuda, M. (1979). Adaptational problems of Vietnamese refugees, part I: health and mental Status. Archives of General Psychiatry 36, 955961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masuda, M., Lin, K. M. & Tazuma, L. (1980). Adaptational problems of Vietnamese refugees, part II: life changes and perceptions of life events. Archives of General Psychiatry 37, 447450.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mendenhall, W. & Schaeffer, R. L. (1971). Elementary Survey Sampling. Duxbury Press: Belmont, Calif.Google Scholar
Mulaik, S. A. (1972). The Foundations of Factor Analysis. McGraw- Hill: New York.Google Scholar
Murphy, H. B. M. (1973). Migration and the major mental disorders. In Uprooting and After (ed. Zwingman, C. and Pfister-Ammende, M.), pp. 204220. Springer-Verlag: Heidelberg.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nunnally, J. C. (1978). Psychometric Theory. McGraw-Hill: New York.Google Scholar
Obeysekere, G. (1985). Depression, Buddhism and the work of culture. In Culture and Depression (ed. Kleinman, A. and Good, B. J.), pp. 134152. University of California Press: Berkeley.Google Scholar
Pleck, J. (1977). The psychology of sex roles: Traditional and new views. In Women and Men: Changing, Roles, Attitudes and Perceptions (ed. Scott, A. and Carter, L.), pp. 181201. Praeger: New York.Google Scholar
Robins, L. N., Helzer, J. E., Croughan, J. & Ratcliff, K. S. (1981). National Institute of Mental Health Diagnostic Interview Schedule: its history, characteristics, and validity. Archives of General Psychiatry 38, 381389.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robins, L. N., Helzer, J. E., Orvaschel, H., Anthony, J. C., Blazer, D. G., Burnam, A. & Burke, J. D. (1985). The Diagnostic Interview Schedule. In Epidemiologic Field Methods in Psychiatry. The NIMH Epidemiologic Catchment Area Program (ed. Eaton, W. W. and Kessler, L. G.), pp. 143170. Academic Press: Orlando, Florida.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rumbaut, R. D. (1977). Life events, change, migration and depression. In Phenomenology and Treatment of Depression (ed. Fann, W. E.), pp. 115126. Spectrum: New York.Google Scholar
Rumbaut, R. G. (1985). Mental health and the refugee experience: a comparative study of Southeast Asian refugees. In Southeast Asian Mental Health: Treatment Services, Prevention and Research (ed. Owan, T. C.), pp. 433486. NIMH DHHS Publication No. (ADM) 85–1399: Rockville, MD.Google Scholar
Smith, E. M. (1985). Psychosocial impact of a double disaster.Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association,May, 1985,Dallas, Texas.Google Scholar
Tseng, W. S. (1975). The nature of somatic complaints among psychiatric patients: the Chinese case. Comparative Psychiatry 16, 237245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tung, T. M. (1980). Indochinese Patients: Cultural Aspects of the Medical and Psychiatric Care of Indochinese Refugees. Action for Southeast Asians: Falls Church, Virginia.Google Scholar
Vignes, A. J. & Hall, R. C. W. (1979). Adjustment of a group of Vietnamese people to the United States. American Journal of Psychiatry 136, 442444.Google Scholar
Westermeyer, J., Vang, T. F. & Neider, J. (1983). Migration and mental health among Hmong refugees. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 171, 9296.Google Scholar
Yap, P. M. (1965). Phenomenology of affective disorders in Chinese and other cultures. In Transcuttural Psychiatry (ed. Reuck, A. V. S. de and Porter, R.), pp. 84108. J. & A. Churchill: London.Google Scholar