BMC Public Health 2007, 7:27 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/27 Table 3: Descriptive Characteristics of the Study Population by Country of Birth (%) and Prevalence of Outcomes (%): SALLS, 1994– 2001, Age 25–84 Level Sweden Eastern Europe The former Soviet Union Country of birth Poland Other Variable Sample size Age, mean Sex Marital status Social network Occupation status Housing tenure Smoking Language at home Years in Sweden Year of immigration to Sweden Self-reported psychiatric illness Psychosomatic complaints N Years Female Male Married/Cohabiting Single Good Poor White-collar worker Lower white-collar worker Self-employed worker Student Blue-collar worker Ownership Renting No Yes Swedish Other > 20 11–19 6–10 1–5 1945–49 1950–59 1960–69 1970–79 1980–89 1990–99 Prevalence (binomial confidence interval) Prevalence (binomial confidence interval) Abbreviations: SALLS, Swedish Annual Level of Living Survey When compared between themselves with both addi- tional variables included simultaneously (Table 5, Models 4a and 4b), the immigrant groups showed the same pat- tern: both the respondents born in Poland and other East European countries had higher odds ratios than the respondents born in the former Soviet Union, irrespective of the outcome. However, the odds ratios were not signif- icantly increased. This can partly be explained by the small sample size in the group of respondents born in the FSU. To test the main results of the study, we conducted an analysis of hospital admissions based on data for all hos- pitalizations in the entire nation. We used the Cox regres- sion to calculate the age- and sex-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for first hospital admissions due to mental disor- 35,459 50.4 51.1 48.9 70.8 29.2 81.4 18.5 32.4 14.4 10.4 2.8 40.0 71.0 29.0 80.2 19.8 - - - - - - - - - - - 17.8 161 47.0 68.9 31.1 72.7 27.3 78.9 21.1 40.4 9.3 5.0 5.6 39.7 51.6 48.4 70.2 29.8 60.9 39.1 53.4 32.3 11.2 3.1 4.4 6.8 15.5 34.2 32.3 6.8 34.8 164 48.8 52.4 47.6 70.7 29.3 78.1 21.9 34.2 11.0 8.5 6.1 40.2 51.2 48.8 77.4 22.6 57.9 42.1 59.8 21.3 15.2 3.7 5.5 22.0 20.1 14.6 28.7 9.1 32.9 60 50.3 58.3 41.7 65.0 35.0 65.0 35.0 40.0 10.0 5.0 8.3 36.7 48.3 51.7 76.7 23.3 60.0 40.0 48.3 15.0 20.0 16.7 26.7 8.3 6.7 10.0 15.0 33.3 21.7 (17.4–18.2) (27.5–42.7) (25.8–40.7) 42.0 (41.5–42.5) 64.6 (56.7–72.0) 51.8 (43.9–59.7) (12.1–34.2) 46.7 (33.7–60.0) ders among immigrants from the former Soviet Bloc 25– 84 years old, who arrived to Sweden after 1944 and lived in Sweden during 1994–2001. We found that both women and men born in Poland (HR = 1.43; CI = 1.32– 1.56), as well as women born in other East European countries (HR = 1.15, CI = 1.01–1.31) had a higher hazard ratio of being hospitalized due to mental disorders than the Swedish-born women and men. However, persons born in the FSU, regardless of their sex, did not have a higher hazard ratio compared to Swedish-born persons (HR = 1.09, CI = 0.96–1.24). Discussion Country of birth showed to have a profound influence on self-reporting of psychiatric illness and psychosomatic complaints among the immigrants from the countries of Page 7 of 12 (page number not for citation purposes)