Frequency of schizophrenia and depression in a black inpatient population.

A retrospective study covering the period 1974-1978 was conducted on the inpatient population at the Department of Psychiatry, Howard University Hospital, for the two major diagnostic categories, major affective disorders (MAD) and the schizophrenias. Among the schizophrenias, the diagnoses of schizophrenia, paranoid type, and schizophrenia, not otherwise specified, account for approximately 73 percent of all schizophrenic diagnoses. The distribution of diagnoses among the MAD category demonstrated that approximately 74 percent of all diagnoses were accounted for by the subcategory depressive neurosis. Further analyses according to age at admission and annual trends were also conducted. The implications of these analyses, conducted on all black patient populations who were diagnosed by nonwhite diagnosticians, are discussed.