ETHNIC DIFFERENCES IN FAMILY ATTITUDES TOWARDS PSYCHOTIC MANIFESTATIONS, WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR TREATMENT PROGRAMMES

T HE tolerance of Irish-American and Jewish-American families towards psycho- social dysfunction in a psychotic family member was studied. As predicted, significantly more Irish families than Jewish families tolerated deviant thinking in a psychotic relative, while signficantly more Jewish families than Irish families tolerated deviant verbal emotionality These and other findings are discussed in terms of psycho-social and socio-cultural theory and lead to a consideration of the goals of treatment programmes. Differences in family attitudes have been shown to affect the decision to send relatives to a mental hospital, or accept them on discharge 7, 12. Cultural factors are known to be related to attitudes on a variety of health-related issues, but studies have not focused generally on ethnic contributions to family differences in attitudes to-wards mentally disturbed family members. One reason for this neglect of cultural factors has been the emphasis on sociological phenomena, stimulated by investiga-tions of social class and mental illness. Yet it has been shown that ethnic factors may be responsible for at least some of the correlations that have been found between community, social class and mental illness 8. Every social class, furthermore, ca