Detailed knowledge about the mental health of immigrants in Europe is limited due to a lack of representative data. Part of the problem is the difficult accessibility to and the participation of immigrants.

The international research project “Mental Health and Immigration” (see: www.segemi.de) funded by the VW-foundation, is aiming to provide those missing data by conducting an epidemiological study on the prevalence and co-morbidity of mental disorders and psychosocial impairments as well as the health care utilisation of people with a Turkish immigration background living in Germany.

To increase the generally low participation rates two different strategies are used in Berlin and in Hamburg. After building trust- relationships to the Turkish communities in both cities, either a snowballing approach and a quota plan with recruitment in public places or representative sampling through the registration office plus onomastic method guided by a public campaign are carried out.

In order to assess the mental health state interviews with a Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) are conducted in Turkish and German in Hamburg and Berlin.

Due to an ongoing data acquisition process at the time of the conference preliminary results in regard to participation rates, strategy differences as well as first results on psychosocial impairments and health care utilisation of people with a Turkish migration background will be presented. These data will be compared with national epidemiological data for German speaking citizens.