For Europe's Muslims, the schizophrenia may be more than cultural...

Posted By Chris DeVito Wednesday, October 4, 2006 - 2:12 PM Share

In the most recent New York Review of Books, Timothy Garton Ash takes a look at Ian Buruma's new book on the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. Buruma seems to break new ground in his assesment that the schizophrenia experienced by Europe's Muslim communities may as much literal as it is cultural. Garton Ash writes that...

Buruma meets a psychiatrist specializing in the mental problems of immigrants. Apparently women, and the first generation of immigrant men, tend to suffer from depression; second-generation men, from schizophrenia. According to his research, a second-generation Moroccan male is ten times more likely to be schizophrenic than a native Dutchman from a similar economic background.

Whether this amounts to dubious psychological research or a shocking insight is hard to tell.

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