The Black Patient and Research in a Community Mental Health Center: Where Have All the Subjects Gone?

The virtual absence of blacks on psychiatric research wards has been reported previously. This paper attempts to explain this phenomenon with observations made at the Yale-Connecticut Mental Health Center, a center with a very active research program that is located near a large ghetto in New Haven. The authors identify three pertinent factors: the attitudes of the center staff toward black patients, the attitudes of the black patients toward the white-dominated research staff, and the attitudes toward blacks and other minorities embedded in the structure and practices of the institution. They conclude that these factors must be dealt with if psychiatric research is to be generalizable to all segments of the population.