[Differences between psychopathological evaluation in German and Turkish language of Turkish immigrants]

The elevated rate of schizophrenia among migrants has been explained, among others, with misdiagnosis due to symptoms' being misinterpreted as psychotic. Previous studies have shown both higher and lower rates of psychotic symptoms of these patients when interviewed in their mother tongues, compared to being interviewed in the second language. In this study, 91 patients of Turkish origin and 50 of German origin with a paranoid-hallucinatory syndrome at admission were examined by an one interviewer each of Turkish and German origins using a standardized psychopathological instrument. In spite of comparative samples, correlation of psychopathological evaluation as well as diagnostic agreement between the two interviewers was significantly higher in the German patient group. Within the Turkish patient group, correlation was higher for those with good German language knowledge than for those with poor knowledge, yet only on a few items and without an effect on diagnostic agreement. The greatest difficulties lie in the evaluation of delusions. In spite of higher disagreement on psychopathology, the potential misdiagnoses cannot sufficiently explain the higher rate of schizophrenia among migrants.