20051119

I Dream of Keira...

...(nightly)

I heard the following snippet on the radio yesterday, a piece on mental illness.

"Blacks and latinos get diagnosed with schizophrenia at a higher rate than whites, even though all groups are affected with equal probability."

I still don't understand this statement. Perhaps I'm missing something subtle.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"And this is scientific fact. There's no evidence for it, but it is scientific fact!"

Anonymous said...

Too many mentally healthy Whites show up at shrinks' offices.

Anonymous said...

"all groups have an equal probability of being affected" - which isn't necessarily true (it assumes a lot about genetic causes), but at least makes sense. I don't think it's *that* slack a formulation.

As a Dr Who fan, though, you may be interested to hear that the courthouse in my town currently has a sign up informing me that it is "temporally closed".