The aim of the main study is to examine the influence of risk factors and protecting factors that help elicit or alleviate mental health issues. An epidemiological cross-sectional data collection approach will be employed for this purpose, and the main outcome variable will be mental health as assessed with the General Health Questionnaire. We will recruit 340 German women and 340 Turkish migrant women. Constructs such as general self-efficacy, social support and extraversion depict protective factors and constructs such as social strain and neuroticism are considered as risk factors in this regard. Furthermore, the coherence between various acculturation patterns will be explored in order to be able to examine the presence of psychiatric symptoms more precisely.

We will present the first results of the pilot study by 50 Turkish migrant women to review the reliability and validity of the used instruments and to evaluate the hypotheses and experimental design.