culture bias

Question 1

define culture bias

Answer 1

Cultural bias concerns the tendency to overdiagnose members of other cultures as suffering from schizophrenia

Question 2

examples of cultural bias

Answer 2

• Afro-Caribbean descent is much more likely than white people to be diagnosed with schizophrenia.
• more likely to be confined in secure hospitals than white schizophrenics.

Question 3

Cochrane 1977

Answer 3

• incidence of schizophrenia in the west indies and Britain to be similar at around 1%
• people of African carribean origin are 7 times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia when living in Britain
• higher diagnosis rates are not due to a genetic vulnerability but may be due to cultural bias

Question 4

afro Caribbean

Answer 4

• Afro-Caribbean people living in Britain experience heightened stress levels, from poverty and racism for instance, and it is these factors that may contribute to higher levels of schizophrenia in such cultural groups.

Question 5

Whaley 2004

Answer 5

• Black Americans (2.1%) being greater than white Americans (1.4%) is cultural bias, where ethnic differences in symptom expression are overlooked or misinterpreted by practitioners.
• lacks validity when being used cross-culturally.

Question 6

Fernando 1998

Answer 6

• category failure
• western definitions of mental illness are applied to non-western cultures
• hearing voices = hallucination in the UK but a religious experience in the west indies