BMC Public Health Research article Mental health of immigrants from the former Soviet Bloc: a future problem for primary health care in the enlarged European Union? A cross-sectional study Yulia Blomstedt*†, Sven-Erik Johansson† and Jan Sundquist† BioMed Central Open Access Address: Karolinska Institute, Center for Family and Community Medicine, Alfred Nobels allé 12; SE141 83 Huddinge, Sweden Email: Yulia Blomstedt* - yulia.blomstedt@ki.se; Sven-Erik Johansson - sven-erik.johansson@ki.se; Jan Sundquist - jan.sundquist@ki.se * Corresponding author †Equal contributors Published: 28 February 2007 BMC Public Health 2007, 7:27 doi:10.1186/1471-2458-7-27 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/27 Received: 11 April 2006 Accepted: 28 February 2007 © 2007 Blomstedt et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Enlargement of the European Union has caused worries about the possibility of increased migration from its new members, the former Soviet countries, and consequently increased demands on the health care systems of the host countries. This study investigated whether or not earlier immigrants from the former Soviet Bloc have poorer self-reported mental health, measured as self-reported psychiatric illness and psychosomatic complaints, than the host population in Sweden. It also examined the particular factors which might determine the self- reported mental health of these immigrants. Methods: The cross-sectional national sample included 25–84-year-old Swedish-born persons (n = 35,459) and immigrants from Poland (n = 161), other East European countries (n = 164), and the former Soviet Union (n = 60) who arrived in Sweden after 1944 and were interviewed during 1994– 2001. Unconditional multivariate logistic regression was used in the analyses. Results: The findings indicated that the country of birth had a profound influence on self-reported mental health. Polish and other East European immigrants in general had a twofold higher odds ratio of reporting psychiatric illness and psychosomatic complaints, which fact could not be explained by adjustments for the demographic and socioeconomic variables. However, immigrants from the former Soviet Union had odds similar to those of the Swedish-born reference group. Adjustments for migration-related variables (language spoken at home and years in Sweden) changed the association between the country of birth and the outcomes only to a limited extent. Conclusion: Since poor mental health may hinder acculturation, the mental health of immigrants from Poland and other East European countries should be acknowledged, particularly with the expansion of the European Union and inclusion of nine former Soviet Bloc countries by 2007. Background Sixteen years after its dissolution, the Soviet Bloc started to be mentioned again in the media when seven of its former members (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Repub- lic, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were invited to join the European Union (EU) in 2004, and another two (Bulgaria and Romania) in 2007. It is just as incorrect now to call these countries former members of the Soviet Bloc as to call the United States a former British colony [1]. How- ever, the reasons for making this mistake are easy to Page 1 of 12 (page number not for citation purposes)