Racism and Immigration

Abstract

Arguably the most important discovery in the recent social epidemiology of schizophrenia is that the illness does not occur at a fixed rate across the globe as researchers used to believe, but at variable rates. One of the best documented cases is among the African Caribbean community in Britain, where the risk for schizophrenia is as high as fifteen times the rate for the local white community. Rates among the African-Caribbean British are much more elevated than rates among African-Caribbeans living in Jamaica. The author argues that there are five features of social experience within the community that may contribute to these increased rates: social inequality, racism, social fragmentation, increasingly fragile cultural identity, and community “expressed emotion.” This chapter describes a British African Caribbean woman living with schizophrenia.