Improving assessment of race, ethnicity, and culture to further veteran PTSD research.
Racial and ethnic disparities in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its treatment have been documented for both civilians and military veterans. To better understand the presence of disparities and factors that might contribute to them, accurate assessment of race and ethnicity is critical; however there still remains unstandardized assessment and challenges to implementation. The authors highlight specific problems in the assessment of race and ethnicity in research, such as missing data, misclassification, classification categories too limited to reflect many peoples' social identities, and inappropriate aggregation of ethnoracial subgroups.



A proposal is made for a minimal uniform assessment standard of race and ethnicity. Additional recommendations incorporate principles proposed by the Institute of Medicine that allow for more granular assessment of race and ethnicity to better capture individual identity and cultural factors as they relate to the assessment, experience and management of PTSD. (PsycINFO Database Record
National Center for PTSD.
Jane M
JM
Onoye
National Center for PTSD.
Michele
M
Spoont
National Center for PTSD.
Julia M
JM
Whealin
Department of Psychology, Smith College.
Nnamdi
N
Pole
National Center for PTSD.
Margaret-Anne
MA
Mackintosh
National Center for PTSD.
James L
JL
Spira
John A. Burns School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry.
Leslie A
LA
Morland
D035843:Biomedical Research; D003469:Culture; D054625:Healthcare Disparities; D006801:Humans; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000145:classification / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000628:therapy; D014481:United States; D014728:Veterans / Q000523:psychology*