Psychological distress among Ethiopian and Russian Jewish immigrants to Israel: a cross-cultural study

Abstract

A community survey was conducted examining the differences in levels of psychological distress and its symptomatology, comparing 110 Ethiopian-Jewish and 400 Russian-Jewish immigrants to Israel. Psychological distress was measured by the Talbieh Brief Distress Inventory. Russian immigrants were found to be more distressed than their Ethiopian counterparts and this between-group difference can be attributed to the greater relative number of females, older immigrants and those with longer duration of stay in Israel in the Russian sample. The highest levels of distress were observed for paranoid ideation in the Ethiopian sample and anxiety and hostility in the Russian sample. These symptoms were independent of gender and time since immigration. Russians with longer duration of stay demonstrated higher scores signifying adjustment difficulties than their Ethiopian counterparts. These results suggest that the differences in levels and symptom expression of psychological distress are determined, to a considerable extent, by demographic factors (sex, age) and the differing cultural backgrounds of the two immigrant groups.