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.
Health Service and Population Research Department, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK. dinesh.bhugra@kcl.ac.uk
Dinesh
D
Bhugra
Julian
J
Leff
Rosemarie
R
Mallett
Craig
C
Morgan
Jing-Hua
JH
Zhao
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