Potential language bias in systematic reviews on the use of coercion in psychiatry

Abstract

Gooding et al. (1) present an international scoping review on studies that examined measures to reduce coercion in mental health services. The topic is of high interest, and they conducted a wide search in a reasonable set of databases, yielding eventually 121 empirical research papers. 65 out of these papers, more than the half, stem from countries where English is spoken as native or official language (the latter applies to countries such as India or Ghana). In contrast, none stems from a French-speaking country. So it may be worthwhile to reflect what that means for the obtained results and their dissemination. The results suggest that research on aspects of coercion mostly takes place in a small number of Englishspeaking countries, while there is a relative paucity of research (and, seemingly, interest) in most other countries. However, the authors restricted their comprehensive search efforts to papers published in English language. Most or all so-called 'international' journals are in English language nowadays. Undoubtedly, using a common language has considerable advantages for the international community. In biomedical research, there are good reasons to assume that relevant research papers will be published in English language journals. In psychiatry, this applies, among others, for pharmacological research, genetics, and neuroimaging. But does it also apply for other topics such as community services, legal aspects, or coercion? Definitely not. Coercion is not a biomedical phenomenon but is placed in the interface between psychiatry, law, policy, ethics, and social and medical services. Empirical research is therefore consulted with high interest-not only by researchers and clinicians, but also by lawmakers (including High Courts) and policymakers. The language for these kind of reports will always be the national. Reports about an inquiry to a French Ministry will be available in French, to a Brasilian Ministry in Portuguese, and to a Mexican Ministry in Spanish. These research reports are closely related to national or regional conditions of Mental Health Care and to national law, hence frequently difficult to interpret for people who are not acquainted with these contexts. At least the bigger countries have a considerable set of psychiatric journals in national language where this type of research is published. It is also no wonder that some small countries like Denmark are relatively strongly represented in the paper of Gooding et al. In small countries, the national psychiatric community is very limited, so that a higher proportion of relevant papers will be published in English. Yet, papers on guidance in mental health issues directed to policymakers will be published in the national language nearly everywhere. In English-speaking countries, the conditions of publishing research in the area of mental health care are basically the same. However, the difference is that their 'national' journals are mostly the 'international' ones, simultaneously. This has some strange consequences. For example, inte...

Tracking research trends on the effects of vegetative strips within agricultural landscapes: A systematic map update

“…It is possible that the publication pattern represented by the core group of countries driving the major trends in this review is related to both the climatic scope of our approach and the inability of the research team to translate publications in languages other than English. Systematic issues such as these are recognised more broadly and have the potential to result in erroneous conclusions (Moher et al 2015;Steinert 2020;Stern & Kleijnen 2020). Without extensive collaboration from researchers fluent in different languages, there is likely to be difficulties in reviewing articles published in other languages.…”

Incidents of aggression in German psychiatric hospitals: Is there an increase?

“…To the best of our knowledge, in addition to the study by Ketelsen et al [16], only a very limited number of relevant papers comprising at least total hospital populations have been published, and all others only in the German language. This dearth of literature causes some problems for systematic reviews [17]. A first study published thirty years ago reported low rates of 1.9% of patients with violent acts in four hospitals in Baden-Wuerttemberg [18].…”

Language bias in forensic psychiatry research: the tower of Babel problem

“…We read with great interest Tilman Steinert's recent letter to the editor (1) highlighting the potential language bias in the international scoping review on the use of coercion in psychiatry, previously published by Gooding et al (2). As underlined by Professor Steinert, excluding all papers in languages other than English suggests that there is a relative paucity of research on this topic in most non‐English countries.…”