DST504 Essay

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Toronto Metropolitan University *

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504

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History

Date

Dec 6, 2023

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docx

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Uploaded by ProfessorComputer13472

Thea Baroudy 501074369 DST504 essay: How madness and oppression coincide Submission date: July 12 th 2023 Kira Smith

Madness is classified as the state of being mentally ill, and psychiatry is the medical field devoted to the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of madness. Throughout history, issues in the area of mental health care, specifically psychiatry, have been strongly associated with racism and colonization in the west. In both Canadian and American society, the concepts of race and madness have been mutually socially created. In addition, psychiatric constructs of racialized people have facilitated the justification and rationalization of the past as well as current colonial and imperialist dominance, and racism. The relationship between madness and psychiatry related to racism and colonialism, reveals the assumptions marginalized individuals often face through false treatments, therefore requiring critical evaluation in order to provide more culturally sensitive and inclusive care for all. Relative to racism, Kanani (2011) dives into the dynamic between race and madness and how reconceptualized ideas of race and colonization in the west have shaped psychiatric therapy towards marginalized individuals. One of the main discussions is how the concept of madness is shaped by historical measures and sociocultural systems in our society. In addition, the history of psychiatry in western countries such as Canada and the United States have been structured by oppression, racism, violence, and inhumane mistreatment (Kanani, 2011). One important factor to mention here is the limited amount of context that considers this part of history and that is, racialized persons with mental history are portrayed as enduring two independent types of oppression: racism and ableism. Racialized individuals with mental illness are thus frequently portrayed as being at the bottom of a hierarchy of oppression, where race and madness are regarded as two distinct categories that can be compared and contrasted. According to the work of Foucault, mental illness means deviation from a socially imposed norm. He contends that this has a substantial impact on how psychiatry depicts mental disease.

Furthermore, he calls into question the idea that psychiatry is a value-free, impartial field of study. Kanani (2011) references research by Foucalt (1976) in the article, regarding how psychiatrists and the field of psychiatry as a whole have a certain conception of reality that is ingrained in societal norms. Since psychiatrists track and categorize people's actions in relation to these standards, and the idea of mental illness being viewed as a part of social values, can be extremely problematic. Going back to the 19th century, research by Waldron (2002) has revealed that psychiatry was utilized in the United States to support and justify slavery. In this conversation, Waldron (2002) reveals how psychiatry and scientific racism supported pervasive racist notions that have existed since the 19th century. Science in the 19th century said that Black people were less intelligent than White people, had a limited capacity for growth, and were innately obedient. In addition, more racist assumptions about African Americans were utilized by psychiatry to support the claim that they were psychologically predisposed to slavery and that it was, in fact, a natural state for them. One of the main psychiatric diagnoses towards African American slaves was the term “Drapetomania” theorized by Dr. Carwhite in New Orleans, 1940 (Willoughby, 2018). This medical term was used to diagnose the fleeing of black slaves, their mischief, and a second common term known as “dysaesthesia ethiopica”, which translates to ‘ethiopian bad feeling” or “black bad feeling” which made slaves lazy, unwilling to work, and tempted to run away (Willoughby, 2018). These “medical diagnoses” in history show the extent to which white southern practitioners tried to pathologize the slave system as being particularly catered for African Americans. Moreover, the process of integrating racial thought into medical knowledge and teaching was greatly aided by Cartwright and other early advocates of racial medicine. When science and politics were not seen as being necessarily at odds, Cartwright conducted politically written essays in order to push the narrative between race and medicine.

(Willoughby, 2018). The prejudice in psychiatric diagnosis procedures is attested to by Hughes (1993) research, indicating that white people were less likely to receive a "depression" diagnosis and that African Americans were more likely to receive a "manic" diagnosis. According to Hughes, these discrepancies in diagnosis were brought on by racist assumptions about the poor emotional intelligence of African Americans. Hughes (1993) specifically claims that physicians thought African Americans were more likely to develop mania than white people because their experiences with mental illness were more "moral and emotional" than those of white people. The societal construction of Blacks as violent, dangerous, deviant, and paranoid has led to a higher risk of being diagnosed with manic disorder in addition to the excessive diagnosis of African Americans and African Canadians as "schizophrenic” (Hughes, 1993). The experiences of black people in the United States also highlight the use of psychiatry as a tool for upholding social order. Moreover, the myth of the aggressive African American stereotype gained popularity after slavery was abolished in the United States and was used to label African Americans as mad. In addition, Pickens (2019) mentions in her book the concepts of race, gender, and disability all developed concurrently throughout history. Differentiating between various sorts of bodies, particularly between those viewed as "normal" and those viewed as "abnormal," was aided by the emergence of modern medicine. It is significant that the violence committed by African Americans was not viewed in light of the violence caused by slavery, racial injustice, and mass lynching. Instead, the state employed psychiatric institutionalization to intimidate, punish, and control African Americans who did not behave properly. Instead, the state utilized mental institutionalization as a tool to intimidate, punish, and control African-Americans who did not act submissively.

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