Long term mental health outcome of returning migrant children and adolescents

We examined how remigration influences the prevalence of psychiatric sympto ms among children and adolescents in the long term. We investigated depress ive and behavioral symptoms in 320 Finnish children and adolescents who mov ed back from Sweden while of school-age during the years 1984-1985 and in a series of controls. The data were gathered in two phases, with questionnai res sent to the parents, children and teachers in 1986, and with further qu estionnaires sent to the parents and children in 1992. Depression was measu red by means of the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) (8) and behaviora l symptoms with the Children's Behavioral Questionnaire, filled in by the t eachers (14) in the first phase and by the parents (15) in the second. We c ompared prevalence of these psychiatric symptoms between the migrants and c ontrols in groups divided by age and sex in the two phases and examined how depressiveness or behavioral disturbance shortly after migration served to predict later psychiatric symptoms. The following findings emerged: The bo ys who moved before puberty had more psychiatric symptoms than their contro ls in both phases, while the best-adapted group consisted of the girls who moved before puberty. Those migrant children who moved during puberty had m ore psychiatric symptoms than their controls only in the second phase. The depressive features and behavioral disturbances observed among the migrants during the first phase did not lead to disturbances in the second phase, w hereas an association was found between psychiatric disturbances among the native controls in the first and second phases.