Post by Souriquois on Oct 3, 2016 15:36:20 GMT -4
Turns out, the Civil Rights Movement.
Fallout From The Civil Rights Movement Led To Countless Black Men Being Diagnosed With "Schizophrenia"
The Civil Rights Movement won great things for the nation's minorities, but these victories came at a tremendous cost for the people who won them. For years, black communities suffered through protests, riots, and, let's say, "vigorous" police enforcement. And there's an even sadder case of discrimination from this time which almost no one knows about; one which put a lot of black men into mental hospitals.
Prior to the 1960s, schizophrenia was thought to be something which only middle-class women suffered, like the vapors or plodding missionary-position sex. Its symptoms, as understood at the time, matched what we'd now call depression, and it was typically chalked up to pressures related to housework and motherhood. But that all changed in 1968, with the publication of new psychiatric guidelines which reclassified schizophrenia as a disease which manifested via outbursts of ultra-violent aggression. Before, schizophrenia was treated with compassion and pity. Now, it required containment.
Guess how that turned out.
OK, we'll tell you. In the years that followed, schizophrenia diagnoses in "angry black men" skyrocketed. Moreover, a specific type of schizophrenia was suddenly discovered: paranoid schizophrenia, sufferers of which were typified as having "delusional anti-whiteness." Which sounds laughable; considering thelynching and segregation and bombingsand arson and goddamned medical experimentation, it'd be delusional for a black man not to be anti-white.
The psychiatrists who changed these guidelines probably weren't being explicitly racist. But in the words of the psychiatry professor who identified the sudden trend, this change "reflected the social tensions of 1960s America." Far from being a cold, clinical decision, the new diagnosis procedures were heavily intertwined with the cultural values of the day, or at least the cultural values of white doctors, leading them to create what was essentially a modern version of "drapetomania" -- the old "illness" concocted to explain why slaves so often fled their masters.
It's well known mental heath has been used historically by men to control women. I did not know it was used to control non-white people as well.
Fallout From The Civil Rights Movement Led To Countless Black Men Being Diagnosed With "Schizophrenia"
The Civil Rights Movement won great things for the nation's minorities, but these victories came at a tremendous cost for the people who won them. For years, black communities suffered through protests, riots, and, let's say, "vigorous" police enforcement. And there's an even sadder case of discrimination from this time which almost no one knows about; one which put a lot of black men into mental hospitals.
Prior to the 1960s, schizophrenia was thought to be something which only middle-class women suffered, like the vapors or plodding missionary-position sex. Its symptoms, as understood at the time, matched what we'd now call depression, and it was typically chalked up to pressures related to housework and motherhood. But that all changed in 1968, with the publication of new psychiatric guidelines which reclassified schizophrenia as a disease which manifested via outbursts of ultra-violent aggression. Before, schizophrenia was treated with compassion and pity. Now, it required containment.
Guess how that turned out.
OK, we'll tell you. In the years that followed, schizophrenia diagnoses in "angry black men" skyrocketed. Moreover, a specific type of schizophrenia was suddenly discovered: paranoid schizophrenia, sufferers of which were typified as having "delusional anti-whiteness." Which sounds laughable; considering thelynching and segregation and bombingsand arson and goddamned medical experimentation, it'd be delusional for a black man not to be anti-white.
The psychiatrists who changed these guidelines probably weren't being explicitly racist. But in the words of the psychiatry professor who identified the sudden trend, this change "reflected the social tensions of 1960s America." Far from being a cold, clinical decision, the new diagnosis procedures were heavily intertwined with the cultural values of the day, or at least the cultural values of white doctors, leading them to create what was essentially a modern version of "drapetomania" -- the old "illness" concocted to explain why slaves so often fled their masters.
It's well known mental heath has been used historically by men to control women. I did not know it was used to control non-white people as well.