ABSTRACT:Research on race and diagnosis initially focused on black-white differences in depression and schizophrenia. Statistics showing a higher treated prevalence of schizophrenia and a lower prevalence of depression for blacks seemed to support the claim that blacks did not suffer from depression. Others argued, however, that clinicians were misdiagnosing depression in blacks. This article reviews empirical studies of racial differences in individual symptoms and summarizes the evidence on misdiagnosis. It argues that more attention must be paid to resolving two contradictory assumptions made by researchers working in the area of race and diagnostic inference: (1) blacks and whites exhibit symptomatology similarly but diagnosticians mistakenly assume that they are different; (2) blacks and whites display psychopathology" in different ways but diagnosticians are unaware of or insensitive to such cultural differences. The article concludes with suggested research directions and a discussion of critical research issues.
Clinical observations and previous experimental work suggest that increased intrusive and repetitive thought after exposure to stressful events is a cognitive response tendency that occurs in general population groups. Tins replication study content analyzed subjects' reports of mental contents before and after neutral and stress films. Data were contrasted for male and female subject samples and for different instructional demands. The data show that the stress film exerted a significant influence on increases in intrusive and stimulusrepetitive thought; male-female differences and demand effects were nonsignificant. The results support the hypotheses that intrusive and repetitive thinking are general cognitive responses to stress and that such changes in conscious experience can be quantified in the experimental laboratory.
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