Mental Health of Newcomer Refugee and Immigrant Youth During COVID-19

In this paper, we examine how the degree of newcomer youth assimilation and acculturation, food insecurity, resilience, and social connections affect the mental health of recent refugee and immigrant youth in a mid-sized city during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data for this study are based on a sample of newcomers, mostly refugees, surveyed between July and November 2020. Indicators of mental health problems include the frequency in which respondents felt sad, stressed, confused, isolated, helpless, nervous, hopeless, or depressed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Multivariate analysis points to the importance of resiliency and family density (i.e., number of siblings) for decreasing mental health problems, while food insecurity and length of residency in Canada increased them. Among these, food insecurity followed by resiliency were the strongest predictors of refugee and immigrant youth's mental health.