Psychiatric diagnoses in hospitalized adolescent and adult Ethiopian immigrants in Israel

In 1984-85 Operation Moses brought a mass immigration of Jewish Ethiopians to Israel. Many of these immigrants were children and adolescents who came on their own having left their families behind. Since that time the adolescent department at the Geha Psychiatric Hospital has had the major responsibility of caring for those Ethiopian adolescents who required psychiatric hospitalization. The present study compares the diagnoses and reasons for admission of Ethiopian adolescents in Israel with those of Ethiopian adults and Israeli adolescents. The results of this comparison show that Ethiopian adolescents in hospital had significantly higher rates of dissociative disorders than the other two groups and significantly lower rates of the major functional psychoses than Ethiopian adults and Israeli adolescents. In addition the Ethiopian adolescents had relatively low levels of nonspecific depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms and were hospitalized for significantly shorter periods of time than the other two groups.