Am J Psychiatry 1985; 142:1447-1449
Copyright © 1985 by American Psychiatric Association
Sex and race of patients admitted for their first psychiatric hospitalization: correlates and prognostic power
TE Gift, DW Harder, BA Ritzler and RF Kokes
Much attention has been focused on the advantages enjoyed by white males in
the general society. Are they similarly advantaged in a psychiatric
population? Two hundred seventeen patients from two demographically
heterogeneous catchment areas admitted to inpatient care during a 1-year
period were interviewed using standardized procedures; 80% of the original
sample was available for follow-up 2 years later. Race and sex showed no
consistent pattern of relationships with psychiatric symptoms, disability,
and outcome; being both white and male was not advantageous in terms of any
of the characteristics examined.
