Cultural and social barriers often prevent migrants in Germany from frequenting centers for information, counseling and treatment of psychiatric disorders. To verify existing hypothesis and to discover further reasons for the low accessibility rate of health care system in a first step we conducted 16 qualitative interviews with professionals of the drug treatment facilities in Germany, 15 with opiate dependent Turkish patients, 3 with alcohol addicted Germans and 3 with alcohol addicted ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union. Also we examined cultural differences in the explanatory models of psychiatric disorders including addictive behavior among Turkish and German adolescents as well as among ethnic German adolescents who migrated to Germany from the former Soviet Union. The statistical device ANTHROPAC was applied to map the semantic space of concepts associated with problems of addiction and psychiatric disorders.

Relevant barriers which prevent migrants from frequenting drug treatment facilities were found out. Frustration, missing of integration and loss of perspectives, which have a big influence on the maintaining of addiction in general.

Ethnic German migrants from the former Soviet Union and native German youths used addiction concepts in a rather similar way.

Preventive information programs may profit from considering these differences and need to use concepts that are accepted and clearly associated with psychiatric disorders by immigrant populations.