title: The effect of social identities of service-users and clinicians on mental health disparities: A review of theory and facts.
abstract: Mental health disparities are differences in health  status, risks and care favoring members of advantaged  over disadvantaged social groups. the contrasting  social identities of clinicians and service-users may  account for potential disparities found in clinical  encounters, reflected, for example, in the provision of  substandard care. the imputed mechanisms, however,  remain unknown. Drawing on social psychological  research we delineate a model to assist in identifying  those mechanisms. we review the literature on  processes rooted in social categorization (outgroup  bias) and in social power (impaired perspective  taking, making automatic attributions) and suggest  that the contrasting social identities of clinicians and  service-users can partially account for why discordant,  compared to concordant ethnic identities in clinical  encounters may produce worse outcomes, measured by  the quality of the working alliance and the accuracy of  diagnostic decisions. we provide preliminary evidence  for the proposed model and submit a research agenda  to inform evidence-based interventions to counter the  negative outcomes of discordant encounters.
authors: School of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, Israel.
authors: Ora
authors: O
authors: Nakash
authors: Tamar
authors: T
authors: Saguy
authors: Itzhak
authors: I
authors: Levav
mesh_terms: D054624:Health Status Disparities; D006801:Humans; D008603:Mental Health / Q000208:ethnology*; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D012933:Social Identification