Covid 19: The virus affects both of physical and mental health, especially immigrants
Authors; Trang Nguyen, Bsc Student, Bachelor in Healthcare, Nursing, Novia UAS
Anita Wikberg, Supervisor, RN, RM, PhD, Senior Lecturer, Novia UAS
Social determinants of health are the conditions that we live, learn, work, and play in. These conditions can influence the health and well-being of one person or the whole community. When talking about the social determinants of health within immigrants: housing, income, and access to healthcare are the most concerned (American Academy of Family Physicians, 2020).
As an immigrant, a person who move from their own country to another country, where there is a lot of differences and difficulty: such as, culture, language, education, and social system. The differences in culture, language, education, and social systems lead to difficulty in housing, income, and therefore affects directly the quality of health of one person.
Covid 19 is one of the most concerning topics in 2020, which leads to a global pandemic. Along with the physical destruction, which brings a huge amount of death, the pandemic also leads to a lot of stress, worry, fear which response to a real threat to the mental health of one human being (WHO, 2020).
According to the website of statistics of Finland, the population of Finland in the first half-year of 2019 increased due to migration. The number of people who immigrated to Finland (14 712 persons) is higher than the number of people who emigrated (6280 persons), compared to the previous year, and the number is said to be increasing in 2020. An increase in immigration is not only in Finland, other in the world´s population.
In this case, immigrants are no option to escape the threat which the Covid-19 brings. In fact, immigrants will be faced a more difficult problem and that can be mentioned as access to health care.
Imagine if one person got the symptoms of Covid-19, such as fever, cough, and pain, the first is to contact the health care center from home and avoid interacting with others. In the case of immigrants, knowing with a language barrier, it must be stressing.
The stress will build up when it comes to communicating through phone and without an interpreter and gesture. On the other hand, the cut off from work for quarantine will also bring the stress of income. The worry of not having enough income, bills, and the lack of knowledge about the healthcare system leads to a major concerned about the physical and mental health of this group of patients. What can we do to solve this solution, is the question not for the only healthcare providers, but also for the government to concerned, especially in this pandemic time?
References:
American Academy of Family Physicians 2020 Social and Cultural Factors that Can Influence Your Health. Accessed: 2020
WHO 2020 Mental health and COVID-19. Accessed: 2020