Describes a retrospective study examining the prevalence of depression and psychosomatic disorders among Soviet Jewish immigrants and the extent to which these problems affected their children’s adaptation to life in Toronto. Depression can be understood as a reaction to the losses associated with immigration; that is, loss of homeland, friends, status, and portions of one’s own identity. For the study, 90 Soviet Jewish immigrants answered a questionnaire about possible problems they or their children had experienced during the first 3 years of immigration. Among the results were that: (1) half of the respondents were depressed upon arrival in Canada, which might have exacerbated any difficulties that their children were having adapting to a new country and culture; (2) parents with depression or psychosomatic illnesses were more likely to report that their children were having behavioral, academic, and social problems, suggesting that parents may have missed their children’s psychological cues until problems escalated; and (3) children with the fewest difficulties adapting were those from intact families and whose parents were proficient in English, were professionals in the Soviet Union or Canada, and had a supportive network of friends.
