Order your essay today — written by real experts, guaranteed plagiarism-free, and ready to impress your professor!
Disparities Associated with Schizophrenia
INTRODUCTION
Schizophrenia affects 21 million people worldwide (WHO, 2018). The estimated prevalence of schizophrenia is between 0.25% and 0.64% in the United States (NIMH, 2018). Schizophrenia causes the sufferer to experience disruptions in thought process, such as delusional thinking, disorganized thoughts, tangential thought process and racing thoughts
(NIMH, 2018). Schizophrenia has psychotic features like hallucinations, delusions and distorted thinking. Sufferers also experience; reduced motivation, motor impairment, difficulty with social skills, inappropriate emotional responses and cognitive impairment, such as difficulties with working memory (NIMH, 2018). These symptoms can be both chronic and disabling. Schizophrenia symptoms can vary on severity. However, extended lack of care can increase the individuals’ difficulty to stabilize and increase their length of stay in the hospital.
People who suffer from schizophrenia experience disparities based on their race and socioeconomic status (SES). These disparities affect sufferers as they may be receiving inappropriate care based on their diagnosis and have difficulty affording the care they do need. Schizophrenia has a high rate of misdiagnosis for African American adults due to potential under reporting of symptoms and clinician bias (Schwartz & Blankenship, 2014). Schizophrenia can be linked to unusual behaviors and cognitive impairment during childhood (NIMH, 2018). This could be disruptions in brain development caused by environmental factors (NIMH, 2018). Environmental factors such as early life stress and the hardships associated with low socioeconomic status can lead to the development of schizophrenia (NIMH, 2018).
Race is a disparity for schizophrenia as African Americans have been noted that they are more frequently misdiagnosed than Euro-Americans (Schwartz & Blankenship, 2014). This has been found to date back since the 1980’s (Schwartz & Blankenship, 2014). Schwartz and Blankenship conducted a study where 752 participants to which they reported African Americans were three times as likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia (Schwartz & Blankenship, 2014). The disparity in diagnosis was documented as being due to the clinician-perceived lack of honesty between races. Bias is linked to be a significant correlation to an increase in diagnosis (Schwartz & Blankenship, 2014). However, distrust and poor rapport between African Americans and clinicians appeared to be an additional cause of over diagnosis (Schwartz & Blankenship, 2014). Sufferers may also experience fear associated with the stigma of the disease and under report symptoms (WHO, 2018).
In a study conducted by Neighbors, Trierweiler, Ford and Muroff (2003), 665 African Americans and Euro-Americans in psychiatric inpatient care showed 44% of the individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia were African American and Euro-Americans compared at only 32% for Euro-Americans (Neighbors, 2003). Neighbors et. al (2003), like Schwartz and Blankenship (2014) identified the correlation between clinicians increase in diagnosis based on race. African Americans had a 33% higher chance of being diagnosed as schizophrenic. They concluded this was due to clinicians perceiving symptoms differently (Neighbors et. al, 2003). Race additionally played a role in the sub type of a schizophrenia diagnosis. Schizophrenia-paranoid subtype was significantly more likely to be reported for an African American individual that a Euro-American individual (Barnes, 2008). Additionally, schizophrenia-undifferentiated subtype was noted to be more prevalently diagnosed in African Americans.
Running Head: Disparities
Despite significant correlations between clinician bias and overrepresentation of African Americans with schizophrenia, there is no empirically verified reason for the cause (Schwartz & Blankenship, 2014). Clinicians’ bias could be due to unconscious stereotyping or the clinicians own race playing a role (Schwartz & Blankenship, 2014). Other theories for the overrepresentation include misdiagnosis. Schizophrenia may be diagnosed in place of Bipolar Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder (Schwartz & Blankenship, 2014).
SOICIOECONOMIC STATUS (SES) DISPARITY
Socioeconomic status (SES) is noted as a disparity for people diagnosed with schizophrenia in multiple ways. This could be the condition in which the individual was raised, developing the diseases in adulthood or the cost of care. Individuals may experience a high cost due to co-occurring medical conditions, co-occurring behavioral health disorders and potential criminal justice involvement (NIMH, 2018). The cost of care is disproportionately high for a chronic condition (NIMH, 2018). f the individual’s birth (2007). This can play a role in the individual’s development of the schizophrenia. SES can increase th……..
