Attitudes of relatives of Afro-Caribbean patients: do they affect admission?

This pilot study explored suggestions made in the literature that high rates of Afro-Caribbean patients compulsorily admitted to hospital can be explained by the attitudes of relatives. In particular relatives who hold negative attitudes towards psychiatric services and adopt non-medical explanations for the onset of illness might delay in contacting hospital services. This could delay the process of admission and make a compulsory admission more likely. The attitudes and experiences of relatives of 15 patients admitted compulsorily and 10 admitted informally were compared. The relatives' attitudes did not differ between the two groups. There was also no difference in the severity of current symptoms or the relative's assessment of dangerousness. Neither group was characterised by the sorts of attitudes to illness that had been hypothesised. In fact the group were very similar to the relatives of white psychiatric patients. The data suggest that future research should concentrate on the interaction between families and the services. In particular attention needs to be paid to the possibility that compulsory admissions are occurring because relatives' need for help is not being met and because there is an over-expectation of dangerousness on the part of the services.