Racial stereotyping: survey of psychiatrists in the United Kingdom

doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7318.905

BMJ 2001;323:905-906 ( 20 October )

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Racial stereotyping: survey of psychiatrists in the United Kingdom

Helen Minnis, specialist registrar in child psychiatry ^a, Alison McMillan, research assistant ^a, Marjorie Gillies, nursing research fellow ^a, Shubulade Smith, consultant psychiatrist ^b.

^a Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Yorkhill NHS Trust, Glasgow G3 8SJ, ^b Bethlem and Maudsley NHS Trust, London SE5 8AL

Correspondence to: S Smith sphasms@iop.kcl.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Ten years ago, psychiatrists rated black male patients as potentially more violent than white patients.¹ We aimed to establishwhether such racial stereotyping stilloccurs.

Participants, methods, and results

We sent a postal questionnaire concerning the first presentation of a young man at casualty $---$ which included a photograph, briefhistory, and findings on the patient's mental state $---$ to a randomsample (generated by SPSS statistical software) of 1000 Britishpsychiatrists obtained from the Royal College of Psychiatrists'database. The sample was randomised so that half received a pictureof a black man and half received a picture of a white man. (Photographswere of one of four healthy volunteers, whom we had not seen previously;they were matched for age and occupation, and photographed underidentical conditions.) To exclude the possibility that resultsstemmed from differences between individual photographs, suchas facial expression and mode of dress, we photographed two menfrom each race; one . . . [Full text of this article]

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Rapid Responses:

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An important determinant of one's stereotypes is one's race.......: Kallur Suresh
bmj.com, 21 Oct 2001 [Full text]
Re: An important determinant of one's stereotypes is one's race.......: Helen Minnis
bmj.com, 22 Oct 2001 [Full text]
'Stereotypes' are useful in clinical medicine: Ted Willis
bmj.com, 27 Oct 2001 [Full text]
Psychiatrists' Perspective Insufficient to Root Out Racism: Apu Chakraborty, et al.
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Re: An important determinant of one's stereotypes is one's race.......: Shubulade Smith
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