Is Migration Good For You? A Psychiatric and Historical Perspective

Abstract

Does migration make one more or less prone to mental illness? Preceding chapters have addressed that question from different disciplinary perspectives, time periods and locations. It remains highly pertinent; in 2013, according to the United Nations Population Fund, 3.2 per cent of the world’s population (232 million individuals) lived outside their country of origin. A Gallup poll two years earlier, based on research in more than 150 countries from 2005 to 2010, found that approximately nine per cent of the world’s adults wished to move to another country permanently.