Objectives: The aim of the study is the description of subjective morbidity, health care system utilisation and complaints of ethnic German migrants from the former Soviet Union at the beginning of migration. At present no data are available concerning aspects of health behaviour among this largest immigrant population in Germany.
Methods: 300 ethnic German migrants and their families (mean age 37.2 and 51% female) were interrogated shortly after migration to Germany. They answered questions about prevalence of diseases, health care system utilization, actual health status and completed the Giessen Subjective Complaints List (GSCL-24). German standards exist for all questionnaires.
Results: 237 ethnic German migrants report to have suffered from at least one disease during the course of the last year. They see the gynaecologist and dentist as often as the German population, pay fewer visits to practitioners and specialists but seek more medical advice from the medical lay system. The majority of subjects are satisfied with their health. Migrants describe their health status as lower than the German population compared to which they also report more complaints (Overall distress in GSCL-24 : 17.2 for migrants and 14.0 for Germans) and different complaints (headaches, fatigue).
Conclusions: The different medical care system and differences in the treatment of patients could account for the less frequent use of medical services by ethnic German migrants. Actual stressors like language differences and acculturation problems are discussed as possible reasons for the increased rate of complaints among ethnic German migrants. Although they suffer from more complaints the German migrants do not seem to modify their help-seeking behaviour.