A Naturalistic Study of Racial Disparities in Diagnoses at an Outpatient Behavioral Health Clinic

Objective:The authors examined electronic medical record (EMR) outpatient data to determine whether African Americans with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder were more likely than non-Latino whites to screen positive for major depression.Methods:EMR data for 1,657 patients at Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care certified community outpatient clinics were deidentified and accrued for 9 months starting July 1, 2017. A Fisher’s exact test was used to compare differences in the proportion of patients with positive screens for major depression (cutoff score of ≥15 on the nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire) among African-American and non-Latino white patients diagnosed as having schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.Results:Among patients diagnosed as having schizophrenia, African Americans were more likely than non-Latino whites (p<.003) to screen positive for major depression. The between-group difference in positive screens was not significant among patients diagnosed as having schizoaff...