Researchers at the University of Cincinnati are leading a four- year national study to try to determine why African-Americans seeking help for mood disorders, such as depression or bipolar disorder, are often misdiagnosed with schizophrenia.

"That's been a mystery for at least 45 years," said Dr. Stephen Strakowski, a professor in UC's Department of Psychiatry and lead investigator for the study.

"Doctors overvalue certain symptoms over others, and they miss the mood disorder symptoms. We haven't determined why," he said.

The problem puts patients at risk of receiving incorrect treatment. Instead of being treated with medications for mood disorders, they receive antipsychotic drugs.

As a result, not only are they unnecessarily exposed to side effects from those drugs, but their mood disorders aren't treated.

Older antipsychotics cause movement problems and the newer ones are especially associated with weight gain problems, such as diabetes or metabolic disorders, Strakowski said.

Newer antidepressants tend to be better tolerated overall than the antipsychotics.

"The important point is that if a patient has depression and gets only an antipsychotic, the depression will be inadequately treated."

In the end, people with depression that's misdiagnosed as schizophrenia are put at a higher risk of suicide, Strakowski said.

"Even with bipolar patients, antipsychotics are only one type of treatment and a patient who is misdiagnosed may never get potentially much better treatments, such as Lithium, because the correct illness isn't recognized," he said.

Additionally because the prognosis for schizophrenia is typically much poorer than for mood disorders, doctors' expectations for misdiagnosed patients may be unnecessarily grim, Strakowski said.

"Treatment is both not aggressive enough, and different, potentially useful treatment, like certain psychotherapies, aren't prescribed," he said.

Several studies suggest that treatment in black patients is overly reliant on medication at the expense of potentially useful psychotherapies, Strakowski said. Part of the reason is that psychotherapies are relatively unhelpful in schizophrenia, he said.

According to the NIMH, about one percent of the population develops schizophrenia during their lifetime and more than 2 million American adults suffer from the illness in a given year.

More than 18 million American adults in any given year have a mood disorder.

In a previous NIMH-funded study, which led to the current research, 53 percent of African American men were misdiagnosed with a schizophrenia disorder, compared to 20 percent of white men.

Another study found that 50 percent of African-American patients with bipolar disorder were misdiagnosed, primarily with schizophrenia, compared to 28 percent of white patients.

Other studies have found rates of misdiagnosis in whites ranging from a few percent to the 10- to 25-percent range.

In their current study, funded by nearly $10 million from the NIMH, researchers plan to look at 780 cases.

Part of the study will involve transcribing interviews with volunteer participants from various ethnic groups. Transcribers will eliminate cues to patients' ethnicities. Researchers will compare the diagnoses offered by doctors who don't know patients' ethnicities to those made by doctors who do.

"Ultimately, we hope that our findings provide a starting point for improving the way clinicians arrive at a final diagnosis and treatment plan," Strakowski said.

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A look at the symptoms

Bipolar disorder causes dramatic mood swings -- from overly high and/or irritable to sad and hopeless, and then back again, often with periods of normal mood in between.

People with schizophrenia suffer from hallucinations, delusions, disordered thinking, unusual speech or behavior, and social withdrawal.

Symptoms of depression include sad mood, loss of interest or pleasure in activities that were once enjoyed, change in appetite or weight, difficulty sleeping or oversleeping, physical slowing or agitation, energy loss, feelings of worthlessness or inappropriate guilt, difficulty thinking or concentrating, and recurrent thoughts of death or suicide.

Source: the National Institute for Mental Health

I used to work in a place around a lot of people with mental illnesses and substance addictions (which are mental illnesses too) and I've done a lot of research on the subject and it's connection to alcohol, heavy metals and an improper diet.

From the evidence I've gathered, it's sad to say but I think a good percentage of our people actually do have mental illnesses, far more than those recognized by the medical profession.


As silly as it sounds, a lot of white psychiatrists and psychologist think MOST Black people act crazy anyway so they can't tell the disturbed ones from the normal ones.

They simply have too much trouble distinguishing unless the mental illness is so severe a person just acts outrageously insane.



I think mental illnesses....ALL mental illnesses are caused by chemical or biological imbalances in the brain.

Alcohol is the biggest factor why so many of our people are mentally ill. Not only is alcoholism a mental illness in itself, but it causes the unborn child to come out mentally ill.

Drug use is also a major factor in mental illness among our people and causes the children to come out half crazy. Who was it, Nas or somebody said that much of the violence we're witnessing today is as a result of the crack epidemic in the 80s and early 90s as the children of those crack heads are now starting to grow up and wreak havoc in the hood.

Then a lot of it is our diet and all that satufated fat and processed sugar we eat burning up our neurons and brain cells. I know when I lay off the pop and sweets and take more fish oil I'm able to think clearer.




I have a lot of respect for child psychiatrist Alvin Poussant who's written books and done a lot of research on this subject. We need more Black psychiatrists and psychologists who our people can go to in a time of need.
We need to get rid of this "pride" thing that tells our people they should be so strong and independant they don't need to seek help when they need it.


A lot of people think racism causes a most of our mental problems. But I don't think racism causes it, only aggrivates it and makes it worse.

I don't think stress causes mental illness at all, even in the case of combat. True a lot of American troops have come back from Vietnam and the Gulf War mentally ill, but what about those from WWI and WWII who saw much much more violence...why didn't they come back all jacked up?
What about people from war torn nations all over the world who've killed and been shot at and have witnessed all types of atrocities but can still come to America or Europe and live a relatively normal life?

I think all mental illnesses have a chemical or biological cause.

It's a problem that afflicts a great many people.

7.7 percent among African Americans, 6.8 percent among Hispanics (all races), 6.6 percent among Caucasians. (NMHA)

People who have been in wars and have had serious trauma are more likely to develop mental illness. The term shell shock came about after world war I when many ofAmerica's young men came back mentally ill.

http://www.veteransforcommonsense.or...TOKEN=33613718

"Some say one out of six soldiers returning from Iraq is suffering the effects of post-traumatic stress. Whether people like Matt LaBranche seek and receive treatment will determine how deep an effect the stress of the war in Iraq ultimately has on U.S. society.

"Before the war, LaBranche was living in Saco, Maine, with his wife and children and had no history of mental illness. He deployed to Iraq with a National Guard transportation company based in Bangor. He came home a different person.

Just three days after he was discharged from Walter Reed, he was arrested for threatening his former wife. When he goes to court Dec. 9, he could be looking at jail time. He lies on a couch at his brother's house most days now, struggling with the image of the Iraqi woman who died in his arms after he shot her, and the children he says caught some of his bullets. His speech is pocked with obscenities.

On a recent outing with friends, he became so enraged when he saw a Muslim family that he had to take medication to calm down. He is seeing a therapist, but only once every two weeks.

"I'm taking enough drugs to sedate an elephant, and I still wake up dreaming about it," LaBranche said. "I wish I had just freaking died over there."

Mental Illness is definitely an area that Blacks, particularly those in the Diaspora need to pay closer attention to.

Bi-polar disorder, Schizophrenia, narcissist disorder, paranoia, Clinical depression and other disorders are rampant in many poor communities in America. If you or anyone was to get ahold of the DSM-IV http://www.psychologynet.org/dsm.html and look at the Symptopms for some of these diseases and afterwards walked thru a hood or two near you, you will see too many depressed people fitting the bill.

In fact unfortunately for US the mentally ill have become another part of life that is viewed as normal until they start wiggin out. I've witnessed kids mimic the behaviors of a Bi-polar peer, walk or pimp strut like a handicapp man and handle stressful situations like a maniacal fool.

In Classrooms across America kids come in mimicing parents, Uncles, aunts or even mentally distorted behaviors learned from wacthing those around them and as a result grow up behaving in such a manner. Its crazy!

As Omar pointed out Diet, Stress, Idiot Psychologists, alcohol, drugs and the environment all contribute to this subject.

This is definitely an Area that needs to be further explored!

umbrarchist wrote: Rorschach tests and other means of examining Normalcy are only generally good measurements when everyone has been exposed to the same socialization. This is a big problem and is why Cultural psychology or an introduction to is should be mandatory as part of the overall training.

The other day I had a discussion regarding Normal living in America regarding some innercity kids. The Questions posed to them were:

1. Do you know someone who has been imprisoned
2. Do you know anyone who has been shot or the victim of a violent crime
3. Do you feel safe walking home from school
4. How do you react to a stressful situation
5. have you seen or know someon that uses drugs

You can infer the direction the questions were going based on my samples and to me these were common events in my life but my Friend who is a Clinical Psychologist explained that from a context that this is abnormal and creates an environment ripe for all sorts of problems and stresses that in turn activate the latent mental illnesses that many of us are predisposed to. So in an environmental sense certain stimuli, stressful living= survival mentality can induce mental issues. Like the stress of being poor, seeing friends and family shot, arrested, being bullied by gangs, robberies and etc leads to stress that in turn results in self medicating, adapting certain behaviors that contradict one's good nature and result in all other problems for them.