Date of Award
2018
Document Type
Dissertation
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]
Williams, Christine L.
Abstract
The pioneering work of Ödegaard (1932) was the first to link migration and schizophrenia by reporting rates in Norwegian immigrants in Minnesota as twice that of native Minnesotans and of Norwegians in Norway. However, only in recent decades has an interest in migration and schizophrenia been rekindled as a result of reports of elevated rates of schizophrenia in Afro-Caribbean immigrants in the United Kingdom in the mid- 1960s (Hutchinson & Haasen, 2004). Later studies reported elevated rates in secondgeneration Afro-Caribbean immigrants compared to first-generation (Harrison, Owens, Holton, Neilson, & Boot, 1988). In the United States, Blacks were diagnosed with schizophrenia 2.4 times more often than Whites (Olbert, Nagendra, & Buck, 2018). However, mental health researchers in the United States generally combine all individuals of African descent as African- Americans. This practice obscures the nuances of culture and ethnicity within the Black subgroups as well as the immigrant status of Afro-Caribbeans. This research focused on the Afro-Caribbean immigrants and factors that predict risk for schizophrenia within this population. The process of migration is a complex enterprise that produces stressors and challenges, the effects of which are multifaceted. The social and environmental forces that parallel the process of migration may predispose individuals to severe psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. Socio-political dynamics in the host country that marginalize others of different cultural and/or racial persuasions can compound the negative effects of post-migration. Therefore, migration is considered a social determinant of health. Empirical evidence has substantiated that socio-environmental factors such as urbanicity, discrimination or socio-economic deprivation, social support, and goal striving stress are potential contributing factors to the development of psychotic disorders in immigrants. Moreover, evidence has supported that the darker the skin color of the immigrant the greater the risk (Cantor-Graae, 2007). The findings of this study confirmed that for Afro-Caribbean immigrants stressors in the post-migration phase such as discrimination, limited social support, and economic hardship that can be compounded by the number of dependent children were identified as possible predictors of risk for schizophrenia. This risk increased with length of residency and continued into the second-generation.
Extent
196 p.
Recommended Citation
Gall-Ojurongbe, Sandra, "An Examination of the Demographic, Social, and Environmental Predictors of Risk for Schizophrenia in Afro-Caribbean Immigrants Living in the United States" (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2010 - 2019. 1871.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general_6/1871
Identifier
FA00013003
Comments
Includes bibliography.|Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Includes bibliography.