A Black and White History of Psychiatry in the United States
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A Black and White History of Psychiatry in the United States Jordan A. Conrad 1,2 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
Histories of psychiatry in the United States can shed light on current areas of need in mental health research and treatment. Often, however, these histories fail to represent accurately the distinct trajectories of psychiatric care among black and white populations, not only homogenizing the historical narrative but failing to account for current disparities in mental health care among these populations. The current paper explores two parallel histories of psychiatry in the United States and the way that these have come to influence current mental health practices. Juxtaposing the development of psychiatric care and understanding as it was provided for, and applied to, black and white populations, a picture of the theoretic foundations of mental health emerges, revealing the separate history that led to the current uneven state of psychiatric care. Keywords History of psychiatry . History . Race . Racism . Mental health Though the intersection of mental illness and race has gained increasing attention in recent years, much of the literature focuses on cultural competency, the current imbalances in mental health treatment, and the benefits of working with diverse groups. Though this focus on the current context of how mental illness is applied to people of color provides a crucial practical corrective, it nevertheless fails to appreciate the way that the current framework of understanding mental health and illness represents a continuation of, not a break from, the way it has been historically conceived. By understanding the trajectory of how mental illness was understood to exist in the black population and how it was treated, we are given a vantage from which to identify areas of current treatment and policy that carry a prejudicial residue of our past.
* Jordan A. Conrad [email protected]
1
Center for Bioethics, New York University, 715 719 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, USA
2
Institute of Philosophy Katholiek Universiteit Leuven, Kardinaal Mercierplein 2, BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium
Journal of Medical Humanities
In this paper, I examine the history of psychiatry1 in the United States from the midnineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, with a particular focus on its relevance to the black population. I will do this in three sections. In the first section, I will explore the development of the culture, treatment, and policy surrounding mental illness in the nineteenth century. With the stabilization of medicine, the birth and explosive growth of the asylum, and the rise of naturalistic explanations of psychiatric disorder, the nineteenth century had an outsized influence on the development of mental health and is thus an appropriate period to begin our inquiry. In the second section, I will turn to the twentieth century, examining how the field of mental health evolved both as a continuation of, and as a response to, the treatments an
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