Cultural Assement in Clinical Psychiatry (GAP Report 145)

In 2001, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report titled "Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity." That document made it clear that although the science base on racial and ethnic minority mental health was inadequate, the best available research indicated that these groups have less access to and availability of care and tend to receive poorer quality mental health services compared with the majority culture. In the preface, the Surgeon General called for researchers to "fill gaps in the scientific literature regarding the exact roles of race, culture, and ethnicity in mental health" and for mental health systems to "take advantage of the direction and insight offered by the research already conducted".