2024-01-22 02:35:20
The mental health of immigrants upon arrival in their new country could play a role in their ability to integrate into their new community, according to a new study which calls for better provision of psychological support for newcomers.
Over the course of three school years, professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Quebec at Montreal Marina Doucerain and her team followed immigrants from 48 countries during their first year on Quebec soil.
They found that people who arrived in Quebec with better emotional well-being integrated better than those whose emotional well-being was lower, which pushes Ms. Doucerain to say that we should be more interested in health psychological of newcomers during their first months in the province.
“It’s really important to offer support at the very beginning of their integration trajectory to facilitate this integration,” she explains in an interview with The Canadian Press.
The results of the study conducted by Ms. Doucerain, which was published in the scientific journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, provide a new perspective on the relationship between the mental health of immigrants and their integration.
If it is known that in the long term, better integration leads to better emotional well-being, Professor Doucerain’s study qualifies the fact that during the first months, mental health also has an impact on the ability to integrate.
According to Ms. Doucerain, in order to facilitate the integration of a newcomer, we must not neglect their psychological health.
“We hear a lot about employment, housing, and this is essential – this is not at all to deny the importance of these factors, they are absolutely crucial – but there is more than That. “For a person to find a job and an apartment, that will not necessarily be enough for them to be able to achieve their integration,” she emphasizes.
“She must also be psychologically capable, she must have the personal and psychological resources to do so. »
In this sense, Professor Doucerain is not necessarily advocating that daily follow-up with a psychologist be offered to all immigrants, but she would like to see some form of support put in place.
“I would dream of a society where, in fact, every person who has just arrived is matched with someone well established in Canada. And during the first year, the commitment of the well-established person is perhaps to meet the newcomer five times a year,” she illustrates.
“It could be just for a coffee, it could be for a walk, but having someone who is already there, who knows things, who knows how it works, perhaps who has gone through the same experience. Being able to have this contact would seem essential to me. »
Setting up support groups could also be an interesting avenue, in his opinion.
“Sometimes it doesn’t take much. It takes a helping hand, a little warmth, a few positive interactions to really help them integrate better. »
Difficult experience
If psychological health influences a person’s ability to integrate into their new community during the first months, it is probably because immigrating to a new country is a difficult experience, argues Marina Doucerain.
“Immigration means changes, it’s upsetting in a person’s life, because you have to start everything from scratch. These are enormous challenges, so we must not take for granted that the person is going to get there alone like that, without support, without any help, all alone in their own corner,” she says.
Moreover, the study revealed the fact that people who immigrated from countries with greater “cultural distance” from Canada reported less well-being during their first months in the country.
“This is very understandable, because in fact, it is often more difficult to adapt to a culture that is very different from ours. The language will sometimes be more different. The cultural codes will also be new or completely different. So there are more changes to face,” says Ms. Doucerain.
“And also, unfortunately, sometimes in these more distant countries, newcomers will sometimes face a little more discrimination. So it will also undermine their well-being. »
Doucerain now hopes that further studies will look at the relationship between psychological health and well-being, particularly after the first year.
To watch on video
1705935616
#mental #health #newcomers #impacts #ability #integrate