A Historical View of Blacks’ Distrust of Psychiatry

Ethnicity/race, paranoia, and psychiatric diagnoses: Clinician bias versus sociocultural differences

“…Black people have developed what some clinicians describe as "cultural paranoia," which is a normative, healthy, and adaptive response to racism and oppression by a dominant White society (Grier & Cobbs, 1968;Ridley, 1984;Terrell & Terrell, 1981). Maultsby (1982) and Ridley (1984) suggest that the mental health context, reflecting the power relationships and cultural values of the larger society, elicits this cultural paranoia in Black patients: Clinicians then misconstrue this cultural paranoia as an indication of psychopathology.…”

Ethnographic Findings on West Indian‐American Clients

“…Anglo-American counselors represent over 90% of all mental health providers in the United States (Maultsby, 1982); therefore, most West Indian clients will frequently be matched with culturally different counselors, Clients who prefer to be matched with their helpers on race and sex will find that the results of this study are as mixed as those reported in the counseling literature on client-counselor matching. On the question of race, 50% of these students preferred Black counselors, 30% indicated a preference for White counselors, and 20% believed race was unimportant.…”

Home Visitation Programs With Ethnic Minority Families: Cultural issues in Parent Consultation

“…Increased course work focusing on cultural education and sensitization would help alleviate the knowledge gaps that exist in many current training programs (Boyd-Franklin, 1989;Green, 1982;Powell, 1993). Increased training in culture-jive therapies has been advocated as well (Maultsby, 1982), although such assertions have been challenged as ignoring the social context in which interventions are initiated (Hays, 1995;Ramirez, 1991).…”