BMJ 2002;324:613 ( 9 March )

Letters

Psychiatrists' perspective is insufficient to root out racism

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

EDITOR---Minnis et al in their vignette based report claim that racial stereotyping that occurs at the first psychiatric interview is insufficient to account for the inequalities in diagnosis of schizophrenia between black and white men in the United Kingdom.1 Their findings are not surprising. What people say and what they do are often two quite separate things. Respondents may have consciously or subconsciously overcompensated for their prejudices in the current climate of sensitivity to racial issues and because previous studies in psychiatry have used similar investigative formats.2

The clinical evaluation that a psychiatrist performs is not simply a list of objective facts. It is a subjective account of an interaction between two people. This interaction is fashioned by the perceptions of the evaluator and the importance he or she chooses to give to certain information. The relative importance of different parts of the history depends on the culture . . . [Full text of this article]
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Relevant Article

Racial stereotyping: survey of psychiatrists in the United Kingdom
Helen Minnis, Alison McMillan, Marjorie Gillies, and Shubulade Smith
BMJ 2001 323: 905-906. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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