The influence of racial factors on psychiatric diagnosis: A review and suggestions for research

ABSTRACT: Research on race and diagnosis init ia l ly focused on black-white differ-ences in depression and schizophrenia. Statist ics howing a higher treated prevalence of schizophrenia and a lower prevalence of depression for blacks seemed to support he claim that blacks did not suffer from depression. Others argued, however, that clini-cians were misdiagnosing depression i blacks. This article reviews empirical studies of racial differences in individual symptoms and summarizes the evidence on misdiag-nosis. It argues that more attent ion must be paid to resolving two contradictory assumptions made by researchers working in the area of race and diagnostic inference: (1) blacks and whites exhibit symptomatology s imi lar ly but diagnosticians mistakenly assume that they are different; (2) blacks and whites display psychopathology " in different ways but diagnosticians are unaware of or insensit ive to such cultural differ-ences. The article concludes with suggested research directions and a discussion of crit ical research issues