Study: Access to mental health consultations by immigrants and refugees in Canada
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Released: 2021-06-16
A new study by Statistics Canada and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is the first to use immigrant landing data linked with health survey data to examine the access to mental health consultation services of immigrants in Canada by admission category and other immigration characteristics (e.g., region of origin and duration since landing).
The study "Access to mental health consultations by immigrants and refugees in Canada," released today in Health Reports, shows that immigrants, overall, and by individual immigration admission category, are less likely to have consulted mental health professionals, compared to the Canadian-born.
Refugees are not more likely than economic immigrants or family-class immigrants to consult mental health professionals, even though the literature generally shows that they report low levels of mental health.
Immigrants from Asia are generally less likely to consult mental health professionals, while those from the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe are more likely to consult mental health professionals than immigrants from other world regions, even after accounting for differences in their level of mental health.
Information from this study could be helpful in designing more effective and accessible services.
Note to readers
This study uses a recently linked database of the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) to the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS). The IMDB combines the Immigrant Landing file with tax files in Canada, whereas the CCHS contains information on mental health, social and economic factors, and a sense of belonging for analysis in a multivariate context. This data linkage fills the gap of existing datasets, making it feasible to analyze immigrants' health and social outcomes by the immigration category and detailed immigrants' characteristics at landing.
Products
The article "Access to mental health consultations by immigrants and refugees in Canada" is now available in the June 2021 online issue of Health Reports, Vol. 32, no. 6 (Catalogue number 82-003-X).
This issue of Health Reports also contains the article "Cancer in First Nations people in Ontario, Canada: Incidence and mortality, 1991 to 2010"
To enquire about "Access to mental health consultations by immigrants and refugees in Canada"contact Edward Ng (Edward.ng@canada.ca), Health Analysis Division.
To enquire about "Cancer in First Nations people in Ontario, Canada: Incidence and mortality, 1991 to 2010" contact Amanda Sheppard (amanda.sheppard@ontariohealth.ca), Ontario Health, Indigenous Cancer Care Unit.
Contact information
For more information, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; STATCAN.infostats-infostats.STATCAN@canada.ca) or Media Relations (613-951-4636; STATCAN.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.STATCAN@canada.ca).
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