WASHINGTON, June 28 (UPI) -- A study of U.S. psychiatric diagnoses of such disorders as schizophrenia has found whites are diagnosed with it less often than blacks or Hispanics.
Analyst John Zaber of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said although schizophrenia has been shown to affect all ethnic groups at the same rate, blacks in the United States were more than four times as likely to be diagnosed with the disorder as whites. Hispanics were more than three times as likely to be diagnosed as whites.
His study was done using a database of 134,523 mentally ill patients in a VA registry, The Washington Post said.
Zeber's research could not determine the source of the disparity, however. He speculated perhaps diagnostic measures developed primarily with white patients in mind do not automatically apply to other groups.
The study is published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.
