Mental well-being of international migrants to Japan: a systematic review

Miller, Russell; Tomita, Yuri; Ong, Ken Ing Cherng; Shibanuma, Akira; Jimba, Masamine

Results Fifty-five studies (23 published in English), surveying a total of 8649 migrants, 40 were identified. The most commonly studied migrant nationalities were Brazilian (36%), 41 followed by Chinese (27%) and Filipino (8%). Thematic analysis of barriers to mental well-42 being among migrants chiefly identified "language difficulties", "being female" and "lack 43 of social support", whereas the primary facilitators were "social networks" followed by Global migration has increased markedly in recent decades and international migrants now 65 constitute 3.4% of the global population. [1] International migrants are considered to be Article Summary Strengths and limitations of this study ï‚· Our study is the first to comprehensively screen and synthesizes available research, published both in Japanese and English, on the mental well-being of international migrants to Japan. ï‚· Our study describes contemporary migrant health and social support networks were found to be the key facilitator of mental well-being. ï‚· The cross-sectional nature of the included studies limits the value in supporting causal effects and generalizability. ï‚· While English and Japanese databases were surveyed, grey literature was not comprehensively searched for relevant titles. institutional health research that includes non-citizens, [11] in Japan, only exploratory 89 research has been conducted on the health of migrants. 90 Facing such a demographic reality, the Japanese government has begun to publicly 91 acknowledge the need for more foreign workers; however, structural issues continue to 92 perturb the humanistic integration of international migrants. For example, a comprehensive 93 2017 survey showed that 30% of foreign residents had experienced discrimination in Japan, 94 with 40% having been rebuffed when seeking housing and 25% had been denied a job due Thematic analysis 235 Many more barriers than facilitators to mental well-being were cited among the included 236 studies and multiple themes were often described in a single study. Among the included studies, the most common barrier was trouble communicating in 240 Japanese as 10 studies described such difficulty as negatively impacting mental health.