Beyond the Diagnosis: Why The Miles Hall Foundation Centers the Person, Not the Label

A 30-year study of more than 10,000 people confirms something we live with every day at The Miles Hall Foundation: stigma toward schizophrenia isn't fading, it's growing. People today are less willing to welcome someone with schizophrenia as a neighbor, coworker, or friend than they were three decades ago — even as attitudes toward depression have softened. Researchers point to an uncomfortable truth: framing serious mental illness purely as a "broken brain" may lower blame while quietly raising fear, and lowering hope for recovery.

For our community, this isn't an abstract finding. It's why we never let Miles be reduced to a diagnosis. He was a son, a friend, a young man with a future — and the way our systems and stories talk about mental illness shapes whether people like him get met with compassion or with fear.

That risk is compounded for Black families: research shows Black individuals are more likely to be perceived as "mad" rather than "sad," and paranoid rather than afraid — patterns rooted in decades of bias that persist in how psychosis is diagnosed and treated today. Clinicians have been found to under value mood symptoms and overemphasize psychotic ones when evaluating Black patients, a pattern researchers tie to conscious or unconscious racial bias. That double burden — general stigma toward schizophrenia layered onto racial bias in how symptoms get read and responded to — is exactly why narrative change is core to our work. Changing the story changes who gets help, and how. Read More Here:

www.rutgers.edu

African Americans More Likely to Be Misdiagnosed with Schizophrenia, Rutgers Study Finds

African Americans with severe depression are more likely to be misdiagnosed as having schizophrenia than white patients, according to a study coauthored by Michael Gara, a professor of psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a faculty member at Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care. Read the release and story in The Philadelphia Inquirer to learn more about the study that builds on years of evidence suggesting racial biases affect the types of mental-health diagnoses African American patients receive.

Racial Bias in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Psychosis

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/outside-the-box/202602/racial-bias-in-the-diagnosis-and-treatment-of-psychosis

References: Bommersbach, T. J., Rhee, T. G., Stefanovics, E. A., & Rosenheck, R. A. (2023). Comparison of black and white individuals who report diagnoses of schizophrenia in a national sample of US adults: Discrimination and service use. Schizophrenia Research, 253, 22-29.

Faber, S. C., Khanna Roy, A., Michaels, T. I., & Williams, M. T. (2023). The weaponization of medicine: Early psychosis in the Black community and the need for racially informed mental healthcare. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14, 1098292.

Metzl, J. M. (2010). The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease. Beacon Press.

Oluwoye, O., Davis, B., Kuhney, F. S., & Anglin, D. M. (2021). Systematic review of pathways to care in the US for Black individuals with early psychosis. NPJ Schizophrenia, 7(1), 58.

Shea, T., Dotson, S., Tyree, G., Ogbu-Nwobodo, L., Beck, S., & Shtasel, D. (2022). Racial and ethnic inequities in inpatient psychiatric civil commitment. Psychiatric Services, 73, 1322-1329.

Snowden, L. R. (2003). Bias in mental health assessment and intervention: Theory and evidence. American Journal of Public Health, 93(2), 239-243.