Differences in psychopathological evaluation of German and Turkish language of Turkish migrants

The elevated rate of schizophrenia among migrants has been explained, among others, with misdiagnosis due to symptoms' being misinterpreted as psychot ic. Previous studies have shown both higher and lower rates of psychotic sy mptoms of these patients when interviewed in their mother tongues, compared to being interviewed in the second language. In this study, 91 patients of Turkish origin and 50 of German origin with a paranoid-hallucinatory syndr ome at admission were examined by an one interviewer each of Turkish and Ge rman origins using a standardized psychopathological instrument. In spite o f comparative samples, correlation of psychopathological evaluation as well as diagnostic agreement between the two interviewers was significantly hig her in the German patient group. Within the Turkish patient group, correlat ion was higher for those with good German language knowledge than for those with poor knowledge, yet only on a few items and without an effect on diag nostic agreement. The greatest difficulties lie in the evaluation of delusi ons. In spite of higher disagreement on psychopathology, the potential misd iagnoses cannot sufficiently explain the higher rate of schizophrenia among migrants.