Diagnosis of Schizophrenia is subject to various kinds of bias, which are due to multicultural factors associated with patients. These cultural elements are vital because they influence psychiatrists during the diagnosis process.
Cultural differences are related to the type of delusions that schizophrenia patients depict. The experienced delusions reflect the cultural values and themes of a person. For instance, in western cultures, schizophrenic patients depict high levels of primary delusions, depressive symptoms and thought additions and deductions. In the developing countries, symptoms include high levels of visual and focused auditory hallucinations (Viswanath & Chaturvedi, 2012). The differences in the types of symptoms depicted are because of the cultural variation in attentional and perceptual processing (Parnigoni, 2013).
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Sociocentricity also affects the demonstration of schizophrenia. Sociocentric cultures like Africans and South Americans are oriented toward their society more than individualistic western cultures and suffer fewer schizophrenia symptoms than their counterparts (Parnigoni, 2013).
These cultural differences affect schizophrenia diagnosis. For example racial biases among psychiatrists that some minority groups are more symptomatic because of their low social status affect the way they diagnose the condition. For example, African Americans in the United States of America are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia instead of milder mood conditions than Caucasian Americans even though studies show that Caucasians are more symptomatic than the African Americans (Parnigoni, 2013).
Language and cultural values also influence diagnosis. For example, in ideographic cultures, such as Japan and China, which use symbols to represent ideas or things translate schizophrenia directly into ‘mind split disorder.’ In turn, this stigmatizes schizophrenic patients and reduces the chances of a psychiatrist revealing an accurate diagnosis of the disorder to the patient and to the family (Parnigoni, 2013). Psychiatrists in these cultures use euphemisms like ‘autonomic nervous dysfunction’ rather than the actual diagnosis, which complicates the diagnosis of the illness (Parnigoni, 2013).
Schizophrenia occurs across different cultures even though patients from different cultures demonstrate different types of symptoms. Inaccurate diagnosis occurs because of lack of cultural awareness among psychiatrists regarding these differences.
References
Parnigoni, K. (2013). Cross-Cultural Variance of Schizophrenia in Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment. Issues , 7 (1).
Viswanath, B., & Chaturvedi, S. K. (2012). Cultural aspects of major mental disorders: a critical review from an Indian perspective. Indian journal of psychological medicine , 34 (4), 306.
