How often do US-based schizophrenia papers published in high-impact psychiatric journals report on race and ethnicity?: A 20-year update of Lewine and Caudle (1999)

Abstract

Background

Racial and ethnic disparities have been clearly documented in schizophrenia studies, but it is unclear how much research attention they receive among US-based studies published in high-impact journals.

Aims

The current paper updates Lewine and Caudle’s (1999) and Chakraborty and Steinhauer’s (2010) works, which quantified how frequently schizophrenia studies included information on race and ethnicity in their analyses.

Method

We examined all US-based papers on schizophrenia-spectrum, first-episode psychosis, and clinical high-risk groups, published between 2014 to 2016 in four major psychiatric journals: American Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of the American Medical Association – Psychiatry, Schizophrenia Bulletin, and Schizophrenia Research.

Results

Of 474 US-based studies, 62% (n = 295) reported analyses by race or ethnicity as compared to 20% in Lewine and Caudle’s (1999) study. The majority of papers (59%) reported sample descriptions, a 42% increase from Lewine and Caudle’s (1999) study. Additionally, 47% matched or compared the racial/ethnic composition of primary study groups and 12% adjusted for race (e.g., as a covariate). However, only 9% directly analyzed racial and/or ethnic identity in relation to the primary topic of the paper.

Conclusions

While schizophrenia studies report analyses by race and ethnicity more frequently than 20 years ago, there remains a strong need for systematic, nuanced research on this topic. The authors offer recommendations for how to conceptualize and report upon race and ethnicity in schizophrenia research.

Keywords:

• Racial disparities
• schizophrenia
• psychosis
• race
• ethnicity
• serious mental illness

Acknowledgements

AN conceptualized and designed this paper, wrote the first draft, coded each of the papers, conducted all analyses, and certifies the accuracy of the results. MOP double-coded the majority of the articles analyzed in this study. RS and MM double-coded a substantial minority of the articles. RS also assisted with searching for and downloading the PDFs used in this study. ES provided consultation for the discussion section. AEP provided consultation while categorizing biologically-oriented papers. DLP was AN’s primary advisor and provided consultation at all stages of the project. All authors provided edits and revisions to the manuscript and are in agreement with the final version. The authors thank Matt Jansen of the UNC Chapel Hill Libraries. His help was invaluable during the article search process, as well as while generating the list of racial/ethnic identity search terms that were used in this study.

Disclosure statement

All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. No funding sources were involved in this project.