Measurement of racial life events in schizophrenia: development of a new schedule – a pilot study

✍ Scribed by Dinesh Bhugra; Oyedeji Ayonrinde; Rosemarie Mallett; Julian Leff

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 56 KB
• Volume: 10
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1049-8931
• DOI: 10.1002/mpr.110

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The relationship between stressors and the onset of psychosis is well described in the literature. However, for minority ethnic groups in the UK the impact of racism and racial life events has not been studied to the same extent. In this paper we describe the development of a semi‐structured interview – Racial Life Events Schedule (RALES) – in order to measure racial life events as well as continuing difficulties attributable to racial discrimination. The interview was piloted on 12 African‐Caribbean and eight Asian patients presenting with first onset schizophrenia. The interview was useful in eliciting racial events but overall there were no differences between patients and community controls. We believe that this schedule is useful for understanding racial events in the individual's personal and cultural context. The development and the schedule are described in this paper. Copyright © 2001 Whurr Publishers Ltd.