Editorial: Advances in Clinical Science and Practice Need Research on Implicit Bias

Abstract

Implicit racial bias is pernicious and pervasive, forming as early as infancy,¹ and across political, economic, religious, and cultural divides. When it shapes behavior, it leaves a path of social, physical, and psychological harm in its wake. In this issue of the Journal, Malison and colleagues² map the presence of implicit racial biases among psychiatrists and psychiatric trainees. This work is especially important as increasing rates of mental health problems among American children and adolescents reach crisis-level proportions.³ Youth of color are both more likely to experience mental health crises and less likely to have access to mental health treatment.⁴ When people of color do receive professional treatment, cultural stereotypes can shape diagnosis and care.^5,6 For example, Black children are often overdiagnosed with externalizing disorders (eg, conduct disorder), while their internalizing symptoms (eg, anxiety and depression) are overlooked and untreated.⁷ Malison et al. address this entrenched racial disparity in mental health treatment by highlighting a possible cause of this phenomenon- clinicians' own implicit racial biases.