Young immigrants from Africa have a dramatically elevated risk of developing a psychotic disorder compared with Australian-born young adults, researchers have found in the first study of its kind.

Data from Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health in Melbourne, suggest that young people from Sub-Saharan Africa have a threefold increased risk of the disease.

The risk among first-generation migrants from Kenya was 10-fold, Sudan sevenfold, Ethiopia sixfold and Somalia fourfold compared with Australian patients who presented at Orygen’s Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre (EPPIC). 

“Despite migrants making up a large proportion of the ­population within Australia, this is the first study that can conclusively say which young migrants are at higher risk for developing a psychotic disorder,” said lead author Associate Professor Brian O’Donoghue, a researcher and psychiatrist at EPPIC.