Effects of interpreters on the evaluation of psychopathology in nonEnglish-speaking patients

Non-English-speaking patients in need of psychiatric services are usually evaluated with the help of an interpreter. Discussions with psychiatrists and lay hospital interpreters who had experience in these interviews and content analysis ofeight audiotaped interpreter-mediated psychiatric interviews suggested that clinically relevant interpreter-related distortions could lead to misevaluation ofthe patient’s mental status. The author notes that pre- and post-interview meetings ofclinicians and interpreters have been found useful in minimizing these distortions. IN NEW YORK CITY, patients whose primary language is not English constitute a significant proportion of the psychiatric population. A number of these patients speak enough English to allow some communication i