The culture and identity schedule a measure of cultural affiliation: acculturation, marginalization and schizophrenia.
BACKGROUND
Previous epidemiological studies have shown a high incidence of schizophrenia in African-Caribbeans in the UK, but not in Asians.


OBJECTIVE
We investigated the hypothesis that cultural adherence might protect the Asians against the stress of living in a majority white culture.


METHODS
The Culture and Identity Schedule (CANDID) was given to patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia making their first contact with psychiatric services, and to a matched group of controls randomly selected from the general population.


RESULTS
While the Asian patients displayed no drift away from the traditional values as espoused by their controls, the African-Caribbean patients were less traditional than their controls.


CONCLUSIONS
The fact that a movement away from their traditional culture distinguishes African-Caribbean patients with a severe psychiatric illness, schizophrenia, from their mentally healthy controls strongly favours marginalization over biculturalism as an interpretation of this shift.
Bhugra
Dinesh
D
Health Service and Population Research Department, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK. dinesh.bhugra@kcl.ac.uk
Leff
Julian
J
Mallett
Rosemarie
R
Morgan
Craig
C
Zhao
Jing-Hua
JH
D000069:Acculturation; D001208:Asia / Q000208:ethnology; D017691:Caribbean Region / Q000208:ethnology; D003469:Culture; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000453:epidemiology*; D012933:Social Identification; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology