ABSTRACT
Social psychiatry is concerned with the effect of the sociocultural environment on the underlying conflict, the clinical syndromes, the distribution, frequency, treatment and management of psychiatric disorders among different populations and sub-groups within populations. (And it is part of the conventional wisdom that heredity, physiology and psychodynamics contribute significantly to the personality and psychopathology of the individual.) Minority groups are of special interest to social psychiatry because of their unique social and cultural experiences of social change, and reduced opportunities, which may increase or decrease the risk that an individual will develop psychiatric disorder.
