Effects of Ethnicity on Psychiatric Diagnosis: A Developmental Perspective

Across a wide variety of treatment settings and developmental stages, African American patients receive excess diagnoses of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, as compared with similar white patients (DelBello et al., 2001; Flaskerud and Hu, 1992; Strakowski et al., 1996). Concurrently, African Americans receive fewer mood disorder diagnoses. Although the reasons for the ethnic differences in clinical assignment of psychiatric diagnoses remain unclear, investigators have proposed several hypotheses. One explanation is that there are actual ethnic differences in rates of psychiatric disorders. However, studies of psychiatric patients reveal that when structured diagnostic instruments are used and strict diagnostic criteria are applied, there are fewer differences in the rates of psychotic and mood disorders between ethnic groups (Cuffe et al., 1995; Mukherjee et al., 1983; Robins et al., 1984).