Race-based misdiagnosis still remains a health care problem

http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7473

Jan. 6, 2010

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Black men are over-diagnosed with schizophrenia at least five times higher than any other group—a trend that dates back to the 1960s, according to new University of Michigan research.

Race-based misdiagnosis emerged in the context of the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s, when activism became equated with mental illness, says Jonathan Metzl, an associate professor of psychiatry and women's studies.

Metzl examined archives of Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and learned that black men, mainly from Detroit during the civil rights era, were taken there and often misdiagnosed with schizophrenia.

"Some patients became schizophrenic because of changes in their diagnosis rather than their clinical symptoms," said Metzl, a 2008 Guggenheim award recipient.

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