Chapter 9 - Migration and its impact on the psychopathology of psychoses

Summary

This chapter uses comparative data across Austria, Georgia, Ghana, Lithuania, Nigeria, Pakistan and Poland, and points out that paranoid schizophrenia was commoner in post-modern societies and migration status by itself had no impact on changing symptoms. Compared to the amount of literature concerning the high risk of certain migrant groups developing schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, little is known about the impact of migration on the psychopathology of psychoses. Schizophrenia subtypes are complex phenotypes with more or less typical symptoms which often differ not only in the cross-sectional psychopathology but also in prevalence, age at onset and outcome of disease. Within the migrants from traditional countries and the inhabitants of the modern countries, the distribution of most schizophrenia subtypes differed significantly. Differences were only seen in audible and visual hallucinations, in the so-called higher sensory perceptions. The data presented in the chapter highlights the impact of migration on symptoms of schizophrenia.