Paranoia in African-American men receiving inpatient psychiatric treatment

The present study tested a continuum model of paranoid symptom expression in a sample of African-American men receiving inpatient treatment in a state psychiatric hospital. The continuum measure comprised the scales of Distrust (DST), Perceived Hostility of Others (PHO), and False Beliefs and Perceptions (FBP) from the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Interview (PERI), reflecting mild to severe paranoia, in the order listed. They were interviewer administered with other self-report symptom measures, within three weeks of hospital admission, by ethnically matched interviewers. A multivariate model with repeated measures for the continuum of paranoia revealed that scores on the PERI paranoia scales correlated similarly with scores on the Fenigstein measure of interpersonal paranoia, but correlated differentially with the Politic/Law subscale of the Cultural Mistrust Inventory, a measure of cultural paranoia. Diagnosis and treatment of African-American men for mental health problems in correctional and inpatient settings should be sensitive to the distinction between clinical and cultural aspects of their experiences.