The peer-reviewed source I found on the Stevenson Library database is called “Immigrants from Mexico experience serious behavioral and psychiatric problems at far lower rates than US-born Americans”. I chose to focus on immigrants and refugees from Mexico because that is where my grandparents are from and I also tend to align myself with being Mexican American.
This source focuses on a study that was done to gain an insight into the criminal and violent behavior, substance use disorders, and mental disorders among Mexican immigrants in relation to US-born individuals. This study is based on the NESARC-III, a national survey of over 36,000 non-institutionalized adults ages 18+ in the US. By using this survey style, they determined immigration status by purely just asking, “Were you born in the US?”.
This study showed one table that was provided with statistics from the study and is well-formulated to show the differences between the immigrants and the US-born. The table breaks down crime to shoplifting, property damage, breaking into a house, building/car, and making money illegally. Then, violence is broken down into starting a lot of fights, physically hurting someone, using a weapon in a fight, and injuring someone in a fight. substance abuse disorders were separated by alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, and opioids. lastly, mental disorders. These were broken down into depression, dysthymia, generalized anxiety, and post traumatic stress. This study used good information to show the statistics from what they found, however, the information to back up the statistics is lacking some. The results did show that Mexican immigrants were about 4-10X less likely to be involved in criminal or violent behavior, and 3X less likely to be abusing alcohol. however, when it came to the harder substances, like cannabis or cocaine were right around 8X less than those who were born in the US.
Salas-Wright, Christopher P., et al. “Immigrants from Mexico Experience Serious Behavioral and Psychiatric Problems at Far Lower Rates than US-Born Americans.” Social Psychiatry And Psychiatric Epidemiology, vol. 52, no. 10, Oct. 2017, pp. 1325–1328. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s00127-017-1425-6.