The Effect of Interview Language on the Evaluation of Psychopathology in Spanish-American Schizophrenic Patients

¹ Clinical Instructor and Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, Downstate Medical Center, State University of New York, 450 Clarkson Ave., Box 88, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11203
² Associate Professor of Psychiatry, New York University Medical School Department of Psychiatry
³ Staff Psychiatrist, New York University Medical School Department of Psychiatry
⁴ Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, New York University Medical School Department of Psychiatry

Psychiatric ratings of ten schizophrenic patients whose native language was Spanish disclosed more psychopathology when the patients were interviewed in the English language than when they were interviewed in Spanish. Some evidence suggested that there were clinically important changes in the patient attributable to his problems in speaking in a second language. The clinician's frame of reference must also be taken into account: what is applicable to native English-speaking patients cannot be directly applied to the evaluation of persons from other cultures.

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