Shocking Number of Mental Health Drug Trials Ignore Race and Ethnicity
A sweeping new study has just uncovered a glaring flaw in mental health research: the race and ethnicity of participants in most clinical trials simply isn’t recorded.
Researchers at the University of Southampton analyzed 794 clinical trials on medications for mental health and neurodevelopmental disorders—including depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, and ADHD. What they found is both alarming and overlooked: less than 20% of these studies reported participants’ race or ethnicity. Many didn’t mention it at all.
Why does this matter? Because psychiatric drugs don’t work the same way for everyone. Genetics, biology, environment, and lived experiences all affect how people respond to treatment—and those factors can vary across racial and ethnic groups. Without knowing who’s in the studies, we have no idea who the drugs are truly helping—or harming.
Even more troubling: the trials that did report racial data were often overwhelmingly white. That raises serious concerns about how effective or safe these medications are for the millions of people globally who aren't being adequately represented in the research.
It’s a blind spot that could have huge consequences. If a drug is tested on a narrow group, and then prescribed to everyone, the results could be dangerously misleading.
The review also found that Europe-based trials were especially bad at reporting this data, lagging far behind North American studies. Yet many of these European trials contribute to global drug approval decisions.
So why is this still happening in 2025? Experts point to outdated research practices, weak regulations, and a failure to prioritize diversity in science. But the consequences are clear: we can’t have precision medicine without representation.
Mental health doesn’t discriminate—but science still might.