Restraint Use with Emergency Psychiatric Patients: A New Perspective on Racial Bias

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This study examined the use of interventions of physical restraint by a staff of predominantly white therapists ( N = 37) with psychiatric emergency room patients ( N = 697) as a function of patients' race. Evidence of racial “bias” was found but not across all levels of severity of assessed psychopathology. This effect weakened after extended evaluation and treatment but did not disappear. The results question the value of the bias concept as a pervasive, cognitive set variable in its influence upon clinical judgment.