[Behavioral problems in children of Turkish guest workers in Vienna]

This paper describes the behaviour disturbances and emotional problems of Turkish immigrant children aged 9 to 13 years living in Vienna. The children's behaviour was rated with Rutter's scales and the relationship of the results to any language problems, the socioeconomic situation and the sociocultural background of the immigrant families was then analyzed. A consecutive series of 111 Turkish and 25 Austrian children were rated by their parents and by both Turkish- and German-speaking teachers. Psychiatric symptoms of the children's parents were assessed with the symptom checklist SCL-90. The prevalence of behavior problems did not differ between the Turkish and Austrian children, who were of similar social class. The most common symptoms were restlessness, overactivity, poor concentration and anxiety. Whereas socioeconomic and sociocultural factors did not influence the frequency or severity of behavior problems in the Turkish children, there was a highly significant relationship between behavior problems and problems with German or Turkish. Moreover, the children very frequently had problems with both languages. Therefore intervention strategies with such children should focus on the language problems.