Mental health and occupational mobility in a group of immigrants

Studies on occupational mobility and mental disorders are reviewed. Failure to study homogeneous types of mental disorder, to include adequate status controls and to provide supporting theoretical and empirical evidence are frequent methodologic errors. Evidence that schizophrenia is linked to downward mobility appears to be fairly consistent; on the other hand, mild psychiatric disorder seems to be linked to upward mobility. For the present study, a sample of North African Jewish immigrants to Montreal was interviewed in 1972. With appropriate status controls, the presence of mild psychiatric symptoms was also weakly associated with upward mobility. However, the correlation increased in strength for those who had changed jobs more recently. A similar pattern was obtained for a measure of job satisfaction. The results indicate that job stresses involved in upward mobility can lead to mild psychiatric symptoms.