The Extent of Socio-Economic Factors and Its Influence in Mental Health Condition of the Sixth Batch EPA Nurse and Care Worker Candidates

The migration of skilled workers such as health care workers has been inextricably linked with globalization process. Although migration can be a stressful event for migrants (Stillman et.al, 2006), people migrate to improve their well being through an expansion of economic and social opportunities. This research aimed to figure out the extent of socio-economic background and its influence in mental health condition of the sixth batch EPA nurse and care worker candidates.

A six-pages long questionnaire has been distributed to 42 nurse and 106 care worker candidates, during pre-departure orientation. Questionnaire contains of: socio demographics background (education, age, gender, education degree, socio economic status), degree of preparation to migrate, degree of knowledge about Japan, Japanese language proficiency, satisfaction with pre departure Japanese language training program, motivation to go to Japan and number of social support. The General Health Questionnaire (hereafter ‘GHQ’) was used as a marker of mental health status of the respondents.

The result of this study indicated that the 6^th batch EPA candidates indicated healthier mental health in care workers than in nurses (p<0.05), being younger (p<0.05), being economically difficult to survive in Indonesia (p<0.05), being unemployed at the time they applied for JI-EPA program (p<0.05), having better degree of knowledge about Japan (p<0.001) and having larger number of social support (p<0.001).  While language proficiency, satisfaction with pre-departure language training and degree of preparation to go to Japan, had no significant correlation with GHQ scores.

One can assume that the mental health status of the 6^th batch EPA candidates mostly influenced by socio-economic status of the candidates prior to the departure to Japan. It can be noted also that sufficient number of information as well as social support must be provided for maintaining a good mental health status before leaving for Japan.