Ethnic differences in family attitudes towards psychotic manifestations, with implications for treatment programmes

The tolerance of Irish-American and Jewish-American families towards psycho-social dysfunction in a psychotic family member was studied. As predicted, significantly more Irish families than Jewish families tolerated deviant thinking in a psychotic relative, while significantly more Jewish families than Irish families tolerated deviant verbal emotionality. These and other findings are discussed in terms of psycho-social and socio-cultural theory and lead to a consideration of the goals of treatment programmes. Differences in family attitudes have been shown to affect the decision to send relatives to a mental hospital, or accept them on discharge. Cultural factors are known to be related to attitudes on a variety of health-related issues, but studies have not focused generally on ethnic contributions to family differences in attitudes towards mentally disturbed family members. One reason for this neglect of cultural factors has been the emphasis on sociological phenomena, stimulated by investigations of social class and mental illness. Yet is has been shown that ethnic factors may be responsible for at least some of the correlations that have been found between community, social class and mental illness. Every social class, furthermore, can muster a variety of patterns for seeking professional assistance for psycho-social dysfunctions, and some of these patterns may be differentiated along cultural lines. The present study attempts such a differentiation. It deals with two ethnic groups and their family attitudes towards disturbing symptoms in relatives.