Sex and race of patients admitted for their first psychiatric hospitalization: correlates and prognostic power.

Much attention has been focused on the advantages enjoyed by white males in the general society. Are they similarly advantaged in a psychiatric population? Two hundred seventeen patients from two demographically heterogeneous catchment areas admitted to inpatient care during a 1-year period were interviewed using standardized procedures; 80% of the original sample was available for follow-up 2 years later. Race and sex showed no consistent pattern of relationships with psychiatric symptoms, disability, and outcome; being both white and male was not advantageous in terms of any of the characteristics examined.