{"id":9970,"date":"2010-04-21T01:52:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T08:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9970"},"modified":"2010-04-21T01:52:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T08:52:00","slug":"the-race-and-class-of-schizophrenia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9970","title":{"rendered":"The Race and Class of Schizophrenia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in January, Nojojojo made a post on her livejournal<\/a> that I found insightful. I asked her for permission to share it with Alas readers which she granted–and I apologize for not getting to it before now.<\/p>\n

Nojojojo quotes Melissa Harris Lacewell<\/a>‘s review of Jonathan Metzl’s Protest Psychosis at The Nation<\/a>. Here’s the telling quote she selected:<\/p>\n

At the turn of the 20th century schizophrenia was a diagnosis typically given to middle-class, white women whose behavior was deemed embarrassing, distressing, and inappropriate by their husbands and families. This disease of the double-mind was often attributed to white, intellectual geniuses as well. (Think of the popular book and film A Beautiful Mind) Throughout the first half of the 20th century, medical professionals diagnosed white patients as schizophrenic and typically described these patients as docile, non-threatening, and in need of therapuetic nurturing.<\/p>\n

A dramatic change occured in the 1960s. During this era schizophrenia was increasingly diagnosed in “Negro men.” As black men were more firmly associated with the disease, psychiatric communities and popular culture came to understand schizophrenia as a disease marked by violence, hostility, aggression, and requiring powerful psychotropic medication.<\/p>\n

Metzl draws his book title from a 1968 article in the Archives of General Psychiatry where leading physicians describe “protest psychosis” as a condition where black men develop hostility, aggression, and delusional anti-whiteness after listening to Malcolm X, joining the black Muslims, or engaging in Civil Rights protests. In short, when African Americans experienced anger, distress, and disillusionment when faced with the crushing realities of Jim Crow and second-class citizenship, the medical establishment labeled them crazy and dangerous.<\/p>\n

In the 1850s slaves seeking freedom were described as mad. In the 1920s women unwilling to conform to the constraints of domesticity were treated as insane. In the 1970s black people who wanted equality were thought to be nuts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In comments, user squirrel_monkey adds, “”Sluggish schizophrenia” was also a common diagnosis in punitive psychiatry of the USSR, associated with ‘delusions of reformism’ — that is, to criticize the state was to be crazy by definition.”<\/p>\n

It’s not that schizophrenia doesn’t describe something real, or that psychiatry can’t help people–as Nojojojo says in comments, “I did not mean to imply that there was no such thing as schizophrenia; I’m honestly not sure why some folks seem to have read that in the OP, but just wanted to clarify. I’m fully aware that schizophrenia is a real, organic, genetically-linked disorder. People who have it can live a normal life if they’re diagnosed and treated properly; I get all that.” But she’s “also well aware that the mental health profession (psychology, psychiatry, social work, etc) is like any other profession whose main tool of expression is people; people often impose their own biases on the interpretation of facts. What I found intriguing about the article was that the same biases affected interpretations of the same groups’ behavior in the same ways across history. It seemed like an especially blatant illustration of the systemic effects of racism, sexism, etc.”<\/p>\n

Dissidence seems to be one of the important etceteras.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in January, Nojojojo made a post on her livejournal that I found insightful. I asked her for permission to share it with Alas readers which she granted–and I apologize for not getting to it before now. Nojojojo quotes Melissa … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,31,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disabled-rights-issues","category-feminism-sexism-etc","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}