The Protest Psychosis

The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease

Author	Jonathan Metzl
Country	United States
Subject	Psychiatry
Published	2010 (Beacon Press)
Media type	Print
Pages	246
ISBN	0-8070-8592-8
OCLC	319496892

The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease is a 2010 book written by psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl (who also has a Ph.D. in American studies), and published by Beacon Press,^[1] covering the history of the 1960s Ionia State Hospital—located in Ionia, Michigan and converted into the Ionia Correctional Facility in 1986. The facility is claimed to have been one of America's largest and most notorious state psychiatric hospitals in the era before deinstitutionalization.

The book focuses on exposing the trend of this hospital to diagnose African Americans with schizophrenia because of their civil rights ideas. The book suggests that in part the sudden influx of such diagnoses could be traced to a change in wording in the DSM-II, which compared to the previous edition added "hostility" and "aggression" as signs of the disorder. Metzl writes that this change resulted in structural racism.

A 1974 ad for the drug Haldol published in the medical journal Archives of General Psychiatry, and reproduced in The Protest Psychosis. Author Metzl states that the advertisement shows an attempt to equate racial unrest with mental illness.

The book was well reviewed in JAMA, where it was described as "a fascinating, penetrating book by one of medicine's most exceptional young scholars."^[2] The book was also reviewed in the American Journal of Psychiatry,^[3] Psychiatric Services,^[4] Transcultural Psychiatry,^[5] Psychiatric Times,^[6] The American Journal of Bioethics,^[7] Social History of Medicine,^[8] Medical Anthropology Quarterly,^[9] Journal of African American History,^[10] Journal of Black Psychology,^[11] Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine,^[12] The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture.^[13]

See also

• Political abuse of psychiatry in the United States
  • Drapetomania
• Sluggish schizophrenia
• List of medical ethics cases

References

1. Metzl, Jonathan (2010). The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease. Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-8592-8.
2. Wear, D. (2010). "The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease". JAMA: the Journal of the American Medical Association 303 (19): 1984–1984. doi:10.1001/jama.2010.629.
3. Luhrmann, T. M. (2010). "The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease". American Journal of Psychiatry 167 (4): 479–480. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09101398.
4. Bell, Carl (1 August 2011). "The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease". Psychiatric Services 62 (8): 979–980. doi:10.1176/appi.ps.62.8.979-a.
5. McKenzie, Kwame (July–September 2012). "Jonathan M. Metzl, The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease". Transcultural Psychiatry 49 (3–4): 640–642. doi:10.1177/1363461512448783.
6. Fernando, Suman (21 October 2010). "Review – The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease". Psychiatric Times.
7. Aultman, Julie (2010). "Review of Jonathan Metzl, The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease". The American Journal of Bioethics 10 (11): 37–38. doi:10.1080/15265161.2010.520600.
8. Wald, P. (2011). "Jonathan M. Metzl, the Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease". Social History of Medicine 24: 194–195. doi:10.1093/shm/hkr027.
9. Freidenberg, Judith (June 2012). "The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan Metzl". Medical Anthropology Quarterly 26 (2): 309–310. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1387.2012.01214.x.
10. Johnson, Frank (Fall 2012). "The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan M. Metzl". Journal of African American History 97 (4): 499–501. doi:10.5323/jafriamerhist.97.4.0499.
11. Sherry, Alissa (August 2011). "Book Review: Metzl, J. M. (2010). The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease". Journal of Black Psychology 37 (3): 381–383. doi:10.1177/0095798411407066.
12. Schneider, B. (2011). "Book review: J.M. Metzl, the Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease, Beacon Press: Boston, MA, 2010; 246 pp". Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 15 (2): 213–214. doi:10.1177/13634593110150020605.
13. Staub, Michael (2010). "The protest psychosis: how schizophrenia became a black disease". The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture 3 (2): 253–255. doi:10.1080/17541328.2010.525948.

External links

• The Protest Psychosis video recording of talk by Metzl aired on January 13, 2010 by CSPAN-2's Book TV (90 minutes)
• Interview with Metzl about the book by Christopher J. Lane on Psychology Today
• Interview with Metzl on WNYC radio, February 12, 2010
• How the Black man became schizophrenic blog post on the book by Karen Franklin on Psychology Today
• Schizophrenia as Political Weapon. The disease turned from a benign illness to a violent disease in the 1960s, just as black men joined protests against racism. article and interview with Metzl in The Root by Felicia Pride
• The protest psychosis – Essay by Metzl from June 9, 2010 in Michigan Today, summarizing the book's ideas.
• Audio interview with Metzl on "New Books in African American Studies" (44 minutes)
• Metzl discusses his book on ABC Radio National's All In The Mind program (30 minutes)