According to a study led by Dr. Joshua Breslau of the University of California, Mexicans who immigrate to the United States are 40% more likely to develop depression than the friends and family they leave behind in Mexico. Dr. Breslau said the findings weren’t that big of a surprise because “researchers had predicted that immigration would lead to mental health problems for some people, but this prediction had not been tested as directly as we have tested it here”.

However, even though the increase of mental illness increases so much when they cross the border, Mexican immigrants still have better mental health than Americans overall. In fact, even though people who are against immigration because of the potential impact on the health care system, Mexican immigrants are much healthier overall than native-born Americans with lower instances of things like cancer and heart disease.

The longer a Mexican lives in the United States, the more similar they become to Americans in the state of their overall health. In fact, native-born Mexican-Americans are twice as likely as Mexican immigrants to suffer from mental illness at some point in their life.

Young immigrants between the ages of 18 and 25 were the most likely to develop depression or anxiety after they began living in the United States.