Depression affects all kinds of people; the illness does not discriminate between gender, race, ethnicity, or any other physical factor that an individual might be. But, studies show that whites are more likely to get prescribed antidepressants than minorities. This discovery raises questions like, “Are doctors purposefully refusing proper treatment to minorities? Are doctors really racist?” Of course, most doctors are not racist. The gap between prescriptions for whites and prescriptions for minorities has more to do with cultural stigmas against mental illness and the uneven health care system.
There is no way to prove that doctors are not racist, but it is unreasonable to apply this notion without looking at the patients first. If patients are not seeking doctors out for treatment because of their own cultural beliefs, then it has nothing to do with the doctors. If they prescribe antidepressants to other groups more than some, it is more likely because the individuals have conflicts about visiting doctors, and or needing medication to treat their mental illness. This accounts for a large percentage of ethnic groups not getting prescribed antidepressants. After all, doctors can not help the patients that don’t seek help.
Of course, whites have negative attitudes about mental illness as well, but certainly not as much as other ethnic groups. Also, they are more likely to be able to afford the more expensive health insurance options that enable them to seek treatment. Studies show that the type of health care coverage correlates to available forms of treatment, especially when the treatment costs a certain amount. More minorities are uninsured, or lack adequate health care plans, than whites, resulting in less doctors being visited and less prescriptions being filled. The racial gap in antidepressants is a direct correlation to the imbalanced US health care system, and doctors have to abide by the health care system. It is not a racist attitude from doctors that blocks minorities from antidepressant prescriptions.
Works Cited
“People Without Health Insurance Coverage, by Race and Ethnicity” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 3 December 2008. Web. 28 April 2014.
“Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012” U.S. Department of Commerce. US Census Bureau. September 2013. Web. 28 April 2014.
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
I’m not entirely confident in this piece, so I’m going to accept any feedback that can be provided.
Feedback provided. —DSH
P1. You don’t need the clunky and useless “all kinds of people.” Ever. Skip right over it to: Depression doesn’t discriminate among races, ethnicities, genders, or physical factors. Period.
The question “are doctors really racist?” contains more than a little racism in it, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it suggest that the person asking thinks doctors are white, and that they would prescribe to “their own kind”? It doesn’t account for minority doctors, unless the even more insidious suggestion is that whatever race the doctors, they somehow give preferential treatment to their white patients? It’s messy, Rachel, but you can’t ask the question this way without opening the worm can.
The complexity of the issue makes your laudable but too pat dismissal: “of course not” premature.
P2. I guess you’re right there’s no way to disprove racism, but don’t you want to further indicate that those who believe in it have the burden of proof? You’re in the enviable position of making the evidence prove racism, while you need merely discredit the evidence and offer a fragment of your own to win the argument.
P3. This won’t fly and doesn’t need to, I think. The number of whites who seek help for their mental illness is evidence they’re not reluctant . . . UNLESS . . . you were wrong about mental illness striking all races proportionally. Any reasonable reader will resist letting you have things both ways. You can’t say everybody gets it but only whites seek treatment because everybody else is ashamed to get help without casting doubt on that first premise, that everybody gets it equally.
Do men need hormone treatments as often as women? Who knows? Men are certainly less likely to be comfortable asking for it. I’m guessing! Who knows? Maybe they never do and their reluctance is resistance to taking treatments they don’t need. Who knows? It’s really tricky quantifying social attitudes, isn’t it? Affordability is much simpler.
I probably didn’t help you much here, Rachel, unless you were really hoping somebody would drive by and cast doubt on your premises. But a reasonable reader will want to know that you’re carefully considering what you can and cannot prove, so don’t over-conclude. If the result of your research is: A good study of Attitude R among groups B and A would answer this question, but it hasn’t yet been conducted, THAT’S a perfectly creditable conclusion, for example, that your research might support. Again, just an example.
Grade recorded. Improvable.