The overrerepresentation of blacks among psychiatric inpatients
in the United States has been confirmed over the years by
scholarly scrutiny. Now new research, published in the June
Psychiatric Services, again has verified the problem but found
it to be more nuanced within the black population than previous
studies have shown. Analyzing two completed survey-based,
national population data sets, researchers at the University of
California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and the University of
California, San Francisco (UCSF), found that in proportion to
their population numbers in the United States, individuals of
Caribbean ancestry born in the United States are more likely
than foreign-born blacks of Caribbean ancestry, African
Americans, and non-Hispanic whites to be hospitalized for a
psychiatric illness or complaint in their lifetime. "It may be
that U.S.-born Caribbean blacks experience pressure to
accommodate and succeed in mainstream society while adhering to
traditional Caribbean values, which might lead to hi