Immigrants are catching up in their access to and use of outpatient mental health services
So far little is known about the use that immigrants are making of the outpatient mental health services. We listed the demographic data, the principal diagnoses and the treatment characteristics of all patients being treated at an outpatient mental health clinic in Amsterdam and compared these data with data for the general population. First and second generation immigrants from Morocco, Turkey and Surinam were treated at this outpatient clinic, one and a half times as often as indigenous Dutch. There are clear differences between the population groups as far as the diagnoses are concerned. Dutch indigenous patients suffering from non-psychotic disorder are treated for longer period and are hospitalised more often. The results of this study show that increasingly immigrants are finding their way to the outpatients mental health services.