Race, Culture, and Diagnosis of Psychosis-Presentation and Q&A

Video Transcription

Video Summary

In this video, Dr. Deidre Anglin, an associate professor of psychology, discusses the intersection of race, culture, and the diagnosis of psychosis. She explores how historical sociopolitical movements in the United States have contributed to the overdiagnosis of schizophrenia in black individuals. She then identifies three challenges that mental health clinicians tend to experience when diagnosing people of color accurately. These challenges include misdiagnosing affective symptoms, experiencing cultural mistrust, and perceiving patients of color as less honest. Dr. Anglin also highlights how social factors connected to racial discrimination contribute to vulnerability for psychotic experiences in black and Latinx people. She discusses how racism has shaped psychiatric diagnoses throughout history, highlighting how African slaves were diagnosed with mental illnesses like "drape-tomania" to control them and maintain the power structure of white supremacy. She also discusses how racism influenced the diagnostic process during the Civil Rights Movement, with Black individuals being described as threatening, aggressive, and dangerous. Dr. Anglin emphasizes the importance of understanding the extended psychosis phenotype, a spectrum of experiences and symptoms that includes subclinical and clinical presentations of psychosis. She discusses the prevalence of psychotic experiences in people of color and how social factors like racial discrimination and trauma can influence the expression of these experiences. Finally, she suggests factors that can improve the clinical assessment of psychosis in racially minoritized groups, including cultural humility, awareness of biases in the therapeutic relationship, and discussing race and discrimination openly with patients.

Keywords

race

culture

psychosis

schizophrenia

black individuals

mental health clinicians

cultural mistrust

racial discrimination

psychiatric diagnoses

extended psychosis phenotype