cultural bias

• variations in the rate of diagnosis of schiz across people from different cultural backgrounds suggests that there may be a lack of consistency in diagnosis and so reliability is low
• Cochrane found that people of Afro-Caribbean origin living in britain are 7x more likely to be diagnosed with schiz
• reliability of diagnosis across people from different cultural background is low
• McGovern and Cope reported that 2/3 of patients detained in Birmingham hospitals were of an Afro-caribbean and the rest 1/3 whit or asian
• Higher rates of diagnosis in the UK of certain ethnic groups may be because the majority of psychiatrists in the UK are white and may misinterpret the behaviour of people from other ethnic groups (Escobar 2012)
• the diagnosis of schiz may be affected by the social norms in the UK

  e.g. hearing voices may be more acceptable in african cultures because of cultural beliefs about communicating with ancestors
• alternative explanation by Fernando (1988) who argues that people from ethnic minorities experience greater levels of racism and poverty and the stress caused could be expected to trigger higher levels of schizophrenia
• Cochrane (1983) points out that the higher incidence of schizophrenia isn’t true of all ethnic minority groups, and is only found in Afro-Caribbeans
• Cochrane suggests that Afro-Caribbean people have a lower immunity to flu and that children born to mothers who have had flu while pregnant have an 88% increased risk of developing schizophrenia
• there is a genuine difference in rates of schizophrenia in different ethnic groups rather than a lack of reliability in diagnosis due to cultural bias