Ethnicity and treatment outcome variation in schizophrenia: a longitudinal study of community-based psychosocial rehabilitation interventions

The purpose of this study was to investigate cross-ethnic variations in prospective treatment outcomes over a period of 12 months from community-based psychosocial rehabilitation interventions for people with schizophrenia. Data were pooled from two similar studies of psychosocial rehabilitation for clients with schizophrenia conducted in the same urban settings. The final sample consisted of 226 people diagnosed with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder, consisting of 108 (48%) white subjects, 81 (36%) African American subjects, and 37 (16%) Latino subjects. Main analyses were performed using hierarchical linear modeling. Analyses indicated that both study groups demonstrated statistically significant rehabilitative improvement over a period of 12 months. Although African American subjects had a significantly slower rate of improvement (compared with white subjects) in social functioning, analyses in several other outcome domains generally revealed that all three ethnic groups showed similar change trajectories over time, with no additional ethnic-related differences reaching statistical significance. With the exception of slower social improvement for African Americans, the findings from this study suggest that community-based psychosocial rehabilitation interventions did not result in significantly poorer outcomes for the ethnic minority groups examined. Several important implications are discussed.