Community in Distress: Mental Health Needs and Help‐seekingin the Tamil Community in Toronto
| Published date | 01 December 2003 |
| Date | 01 December 2003 |
| Author | Laura Simich,Nalini Pandalangat,Morton Beiser |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.0020-7985.2003.00268.x |
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© 2003 IOM
International Migration Vol. 41 (5) 2003
ISSN 0020-7985
* Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Emerging Research
Community in Distress:
Mental Health Needs and Help-seeking
in the Tamil Community in Toronto
Morton Beiser, Laura Simich, and Nalini Pandalangat*
INTRODUCTION
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR),
20 million of the world’s people are refugees, asylum seekers, refugees in the
process of repatriation, or internally displaced. Although more than 150 United
Nations’ member countries have agreed to protect refugees, only 20 – led by the
United States, Canada, Norway, and Sweden – offer permanent resettlement to
refugees and asylum seekers. Canada’s annual quota is approximately 20,000,
about half of whom are people who have been accepted abroad in collaboration
with UNHCR, the rest are people who have come to Canada, claimed refugee
status, and had their claim upheld.
By definition, refugees have traumatic pre-migration and pre-settlement histories,
and it is widely assumed that their experiences jeopardize mental health (Can-
adian Task Force, 1988). Although mental health need and the availability of serv-
ices to meet that need should be a matter of concern for resettlement countries,
relatively little large-scale epidemiological research has documented the amount
of psychological distress in refugee populations; the mental health effects of post-
migration, as well as pre-migration stressors; the individual and community fac-
tors which can protect mental health; or the fit between need on the one hand, and
the utilization and availability of services on the other.
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