One of the reasons British psychiatrist Dr. Kwame McKenzie, an international expert on the mental health of immigrants, moved to Canada was its famed cultural mosaic. He looked forward to seeing it for himself when he accepted a job as a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) six years ago.

But he was in for a letdown.

Rather than the pluralistic society he was expecting in which newcomers and native-born Canadians fit together like pieces of a multicoloured collage, he found “a whole bunch of pieces dropped indiscriminately.”

His first impression was quickly confirmed by his work as a as a clinical psychiatrist and researcher. A disproportionate number of his patients were poor, unemployed or underemployed immigrants struggling to get a foothold in their new country. Most lived outside Toronto’s 85-per-cent-white downtown core. Some faced overt discrimination; most didn’t know why they were being passed over by employers, shunned by landlords and marginalized by society.

McKenzie knew. He’d seen the same thing in Maudsley Hospital in south London, where he began his medical career. He’d seen it in every London neighbourhood with a high concentration of residents of Caribbean and African origin. His research showed the pattern existed throughout Europe and the United States.

Relinquishing his hope that Canada might be the happy exception, he resolved anew to break the link between immigration and mental illness.

Last week McKenzie, who is now medical director of CAMH, led a “public conversation” on the emotionally fraught issue. His talk, hosted by the Literary Review of Canada, was entitled “Immigration Sickness.”

He began, to the surprise of most listeners, by praising Immigration Minister Jason Kenney for tackling the mismatch between immigrants’ qualifications and employers’ needs. Wasted talent, the psychiatrist explained, is not only bad for the economy, it is bad for the health of immigrants, he explained. “If you’re a taxi driver with a PhD in philosophy, it leads to psychological pain.”

Any individual will be worn down by protracted underemployment, he said, increasing the likelihood of both mental illness — depression, schizophrenia and psychosis — and physical deterioration. But an immigrant without strong family support or a well-established social network has a much higher risk of losing heart and losing hope.

McKenzie sees these symptoms most acutely in fellow physicians. “Ninety-five per cent of them never practise in Canada, despite the shortage of family doctors. This makes their immigration meaningless.”

Kenney’s solution, while useful, will be short-lived, McKenzie warned. “Choosing people for today’s jobs when the economy is changing rapidly is not very ‘Gretzky’ ” he said, referring the Canadian hockey legend’s ability to play where the puck was going to be. “What we should be looking for is adaptability.”

There are two strong predictors of that. The first is resilience, the ability to recover from setbacks and move forward. The second is emotional intelligence, a blend of IQ, self-knowledge, the capacity to understand people and the ability to use this information to make the best of any situation.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, both can be measured, McKenzie said — and it doesn’t take a psychiatrist. Corporate headhunters do it all the time.

But he added one important caveat: Choosing immigrants solely on the basis of their workplace attributes would be a mistake. “Workers can build an industry, but people build a country.” To achieve both goals, Canada has to provide an environment in which immigrants can thrive and contribute to their adopted home as proud community members, taxpaying citizens and role models.

“My question is whether we’re committed to supporting them so they can help us move forward.”

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No one in the room had an answer. They certainly hadn’t heard one from Ottawa. No one was even asking the question.