Anj @anjixx - Twitter Profile

Long 📮 I read the comments around this tweet & went looking for the research behind it. The Nigerian-Canadian study is small, so I wouldn't treat it as the final word on every Nigerian abroad, but it's still a serious warning sign. In that sample, 51.7% of Nigerian immigrants in Canada screened positive for depression on the PHQ-9. That's not the same as a formal psychiatric diagnosis, but it's far too high to dismiss as ordinary homesickness, winter blues, or "people are just ungrateful abroad." The part that stood out most was the time factor. The risk was higher among Nigerians who had lived in Canada for more than 10 yrs, which cuts against the neat story we often tell ourselves about migration. We assume that once pple get through the early chaos, sort out papers, jobs & housing, the emotional side of life gradually stabilises. This data suggests that, for some pple, the opposite may be happening. The pressure does not always resolve. It CAN accumulate. The loneliness becomes routine & the underemployment becomes humiliating with the degrees not translating cleanly, the bills are never-ending & the childcare is brutal & expensive. The neighbours are watching you like a hawk to know when to call child services. The social support is thinner than expected & waxes & wanes. You're surrounded by systems that function better than Nigeria's, but you're also suddenly much smaller inside them. And the worst part is that it is difficult to communicate this back home. How do you explain depression in Canada to pple who are still praying for your exact location? How do you tell family that the country they see as deliverance has become emotionally suffocating? The moment you complain, someone reminds you that "at least you are abroad" so you stop talking "in the nonsense", you perform gratitude, you post the snow pictures, & you send money home. You become proof of success while privately disintegrating. In the end, that silence compounds the illness. & this is not only about the first generation. The stress leaks into families. Canadian data on immigrant children shows a pattern where second-generation immigrant children generally have HIGHER rates of mental disorder diagnoses than first-generation immigrant children. So the cost does not always end with the person who boarded the plane, it can also travel into the children too. This is the japa conversation we keep avoiding. Migration can save lives, open doors and transform families, but it does not automatically produce belonging, community or peace. Sometimes the person who "made it out" is still drowning, they’re just drowning in a place where the roads are better, the lights stay on, and nobody expects them to still be struggling.

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Anj @anjixx

17 days ago

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