Psychiatric symptoms in white and black inpatients. I: Record study

• Published in: Comprehensive psychiatry 1973-11, Vol.14 (6), p.475-481
• Main Authors: Liss, Jay L., Welner, Amos, Robins, Eli, Richardson, Marsha
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; African Americans; Female; Hospitalization; Hospitals, Psychiatric; Humans; Male; Medical Records; Mental Disorders - diagnosis; Mental Disorders - epidemiology; Missouri; Sex Factors
• ISSN: 0010-440X; 1532-8384
• DOI: 10.1016/0010-440X(73)90032-1

The frequency of symptoms of 256 patients who were discharged from an inpatient service as undiagnosed were compared by race, sex, and age. The symptoms that were significantly more frequent in the black patients were dull affect, delusions of grandeur, delusions of body change (females only), delusions of passivity, fighting, auditory and visual hallucinations, concrete proverb interpretation (males only), psychomotor retardation (females only), decreased need for sleep (males only), increased speech (males only), and vague history (males only). Other variables more frequent in the black patients were age of first psychiatric and first Renard admissions less than 30, and treatment with major tranquilizers during first hospitalization. The only symptom recorded more frequently in the white patients was depressed affect. Sixty-eight percent of the patients met the rigorous criteria for a diagnosis and no significant difference in frequency of diagnosis (includes patients who remained undiagnosed) was found between white and black patients. Greater association was found between symptoms and diagnosis in the white population than in the black population. Because the differences in symptoms between black and white patients could not be explained by a difference in frequency of psychiatric disorders, because selection factors prompting hospitalization and quality of symptoms were not different for the groups, and because the association of symptoms with specific psychiatric diagnoses was greater in the white population than in the black, further support for the possibility that psychiatric symptoms are associated with a certain group of patients is required.