Dataset Information

Refugee migration and risk of schizophrenia and other non-affective psychoses: cohort study of 1.3 million people in Sweden.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To determine whether refugees are at elevated risk of schizophrenia and other non-affective psychotic disorders, relative to non-refugee migrants from similar regions of origin and the Swedish-born population.

Design

Cohort study of people living in Sweden, born after 1 January 1984 and followed from their 14th birthday or arrival in Sweden, if later, until diagnosis of a non-affective psychotic disorder, emigration, death, or 31 December 2011.

Setting

Linked Swedish national register data.

Participants

1,347,790 people, including people born in Sweden to two Swedish-born parents (1,191,004; 88.4%), refugees (24,123; 1.8%), and non-refugee migrants (132,663; 9.8%) from four major refugee generating regions: the Middle East and north Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe and Russia.

Main outcome measures

Cox regression analysis was used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios for non-affective psychotic disorders by refugee status and region of origin, controlling for age at risk, sex, disposable income, and population density.

Results

3704 cases of non-affective psychotic disorder were identified during 8.9 million person years of follow-up. The crude incidence rate was 38.5 (95% confidence interval 37.2 to 39.9) per 100,000 person years in the Swedish-born population, 80.4 (72.7 to 88.9) per 100,000 person years in non-refugee migrants, and 126.4 (103.1 to 154.8) per 100,000 person years in refugees. Refugees were at increased risk of psychosis compared with both the Swedish-born population (adjusted hazard ratio 2.9, 95% confidence interval 2.3 to 3.6) and non-refugee migrants (1.7, 1.3 to 2.1) after adjustment for confounders. The increased rate in refugees compared with non-refugee migrants was more pronounced in men (likelihood ratio test for interaction ?(2) (df=2) z=13.5; P=0.001) and was present for refugees from all regions except sub-Saharan Africa. Both refugees and non-refugee migrants from sub-Saharan Africa had similarly high rates relative to the Swedish-born population.

Conclusions

Refugees face an increased risk of schizophrenia and other non-affective psychotic disorders compared with non-refugee migrants from similar regions of origin and the native-born Swedish population. Clinicians and health service planners in refugee receiving countries should be aware of a raised risk of psychosis in addition to other mental and physical health inequalities experienced by refugees.

SUBMITTER: Hollander AC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4793153 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundRefugees are at higher risk of some psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and psychosis, compared with other non-refugee migrants and the majority population. However, it is unclear whether this also applies to substance use disorders, which we investigated in a national register cohort study in Sweden. We also investigated whether risk varied by region of origin, age at migration, time in Sweden, and diagnosis of PTSD.Methods and findingsUsing linked Swedish register data, we followed a cohort born between 1984 and 1997 from their 14th birthday or arrival in Sweden, if later, until an International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision (ICD-10), diagnosis of substance use disorder (codes F10.X-19.X), emigration, death, or end of follow-up (31 December 2016). Refugee and non-refugee migrants were restricted to those from regions with at least 1,000 refugees in the Swedish registers. We used Cox proportional hazards regression to estimate unadjusted and adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) in refugee and non-refugee migrants, compared with Swedish-born individuals, for all substance use disorders (F10.X-19.X), alcohol use disorders (F10.X), cannabis use disorders (F12.X), and polydrug use disorders (F19.X). In adjusted analyses, we controlled for age, sex, birth year, family income, family employment status, population density, and PTSD diagnosis. Our sample of 1,241,901 participants included 17,783 (1.4%) refugee and 104,250 (8.4%) non-refugee migrants. Refugees' regions of origin were represented in proportions ranging from 6.0% (Eastern Europe and Russia) to 41.4% (Middle East and North Africa); proportions of non-refugee migrants' regions of origin ranged from 11.8% (sub-Saharan Africa) to 33.7% (Middle East and North Africa). These groups were more economically disadvantaged at cohort entry (p < 0.001) than the Swedish-born population. Refugee (aHR: 0.52; 95% CI 0.46-0.60) and non-refugee (aHR: 0.46; 95% CI 0.43-0.49) migrants had similarly lower rates of all substance use disorders compared with Swedish-born individuals (crude incidence: 290.2 cases per 100,000 person-years; 95% CI 287.3-293.1). Rates of substance use disorders in migrants converged to the Swedish-born rate over time, indicated by both earlier age at migration and longer time in Sweden. We observed similar patterns for alcohol and polydrug use disorders, separately, although differences in cannabis use were less marked; findings did not differ substantially by migrants' region of origin. Finally, while a PTSD diagnosis was over 5 times more common in refugees than the Swedish-born population, it was more strongly associated with increased rates of substance use disorders in the Swedish-born population (aHR: 7.36; 95% CI 6.79-7.96) than non-refugee migrants (HR: 4.88; 95% CI 3.71-6.41; likelihood ratio test [LRT]: p = 0.01). The main limitations of our study were possible non-differential or differential under-ascertainment (by migrant status) of those only seen via primary care and that our findings may not generalize to undocumented migrants, who were not part of this study.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that lower rates of substance use disorders in migrants and refugees may reflect prevalent behaviors with respect to substance use in migrants' countries of origin, although this effect appeared to diminish over time in Sweden, with rates converging towards the substantial burden of substance use morbidity we observed in the Swedish-born population.

Project description:The current debate about the diagnostic significance of delusion revolves around two positions. The neurocognitive position conceives delusion as a non-specific, though polymorphic, symptom. The psychopathological position views features of delusion such as content and structure as having meaningful connections with diagnostic entities. This study aims at contributing to this debate by examining the association between delusional themes and diagnosis in a sample of 830 adult psychotic patients. All diagnoses were made by experienced psychiatrists according to DSM-IV or ICD-10 criteria, and in 348 patients were established with the SCID-I. All patients were administered the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS). In each patient, the presence of somatic delusions and delusions of guilt, grandiosity, and persecution was determined by examining the scores on relevant BPRS items. Delusions of guilt were almost pathognomonic for a psychotic depressive condition (psychotic major depression 40%; psychotic bipolar depression 30%; depressed schizoaffective disorder 8%; bipolar and schizoaffective mixed states 6 and 7%, respectively). Only 1% of patients with schizophrenia and no patient with delusional disorder or bipolar or schizoaffective manic state showed such delusions. The difference between unipolar and bipolar depression and the other diagnostic groups was highly significant. Delusions of grandiosity characterized mostly patients with manic symptoms (bipolar mania 20%; bipolar mixed states 19%; manic schizoaffective disorder 10%). They were observed significantly more often in bipolar mania than in schizophrenia (7%). Persecutory delusions were broadly distributed across diagnostic categories. However, they were significantly more frequent among patients with schizophrenia and delusional disorder compared with depressed and manic patients. Somatic delusions were also observed in all diagnostic groups, with no group standing out as distinct from the others in terms of an increased prevalence of somatic delusions. Our findings suggest a middle position in the debate between the neurocognitive and the psychopathological approaches. On the one hand, the widespread observation of persecutory delusions suggests the usefulness of searching for non-specific pathogenic mechanisms. On the other hand, the association between some delusional contents and psychiatric diagnosis suggests that a phenomenological analysis of the delusional experience may be a helpful tool for the clinician in the diagnostic process.