Double Jeopardy: Psychopathology of Black Mentally Ill Returned Migrants to Jamaica

The psychopathology of 126 black Jamaican migrants who had spent an average of 12 years in North America and the United Kingdom and had subsequently returned to Jamaica, was established and compared to that of a matched control group of Jamaicans who had never migrated. There was a statistically significant difference in the pattern of diagnosis between the two groups (p < 0.0001), and although the existence of a past history of mental illness between the groups was not statistically significant (p < 0.1), the returned migrants had a significantly higher frequency of mental hospitalisation (p<0.0001) than the controls, with 94% of the previous hospitalisations of the returned migrants being for schizophrenic illnesses. Case studies are presented to illustrate the social stresses experienced by the returned migrant group in the countries to which they migrated and on the return to their home country, and thus to underscore the double jeopardy faced by these patients experiencing return migration.