Invisibility and selective avoidance: gender and ethnicity in psychiatry and psychiatric nursing staff interaction

This research-based article analyzes institutionalized inequity and discrimination in the forms of sexism and racism within a large, busy, contemporary medical center's Department of Psychiatry. Within that context, issues of control and mechanisms of avoidance served to perpetuate contradictions inherent in what professes to be a psychologically therapeutic and empowering milieu. Despite cognizance of the roles that culture and gender play in care and treatment of patients, psychiatric and mental health professionals at "Central" tended to avoid critical examination of their own and co-workers' ethnicity and gender as those characteristics influenced life experiences, occupational roles and statuses, and hierarchical relationships.