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eudaemonics's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
4.5
Metzl paints a graphic and saddening picture of the history of schizophrenia as a disease and the way the "look" of schizophrenia has evolved specifically in the United States of America.
Psychiatry has been dominated by specifically white and white male voices, and I think a shift towards intersectionality and cross-cultural understanding has only begun recently. Metzl marries his backgrounds in sociology and psychology to shed light on the way psychiatric diagnoses are not static categories, but things that are informed by their time periods and dominant cultural attitudes and will grow and change to reflect those things. Diagnoses are born from the intermingling of these factors and while psychiatry is not always a tool for social control, in the context of schizophrenia it is still used to wrongfully incarcerate black men at a disproportionate rate and feed the American prison industrial complex -- which is in itself just slavery with a new coat of paint on it.
This book does nothing to provide answers to the problem it sheds light on, but I don't think that is the intent in the first place. It does provide us with the tools, language, and context to speak out against the stigma of schizophrenia in the modern USA.
Psychiatry has been dominated by specifically white and white male voices, and I think a shift towards intersectionality and cross-cultural understanding has only begun recently. Metzl marries his backgrounds in sociology and psychology to shed light on the way psychiatric diagnoses are not static categories, but things that are informed by their time periods and dominant cultural attitudes and will grow and change to reflect those things. Diagnoses are born from the intermingling of these factors and while psychiatry is not always a tool for social control, in the context of schizophrenia it is still used to wrongfully incarcerate black men at a disproportionate rate and feed the American prison industrial complex -- which is in itself just slavery with a new coat of paint on it.
This book does nothing to provide answers to the problem it sheds light on, but I don't think that is the intent in the first place. It does provide us with the tools, language, and context to speak out against the stigma of schizophrenia in the modern USA.
arih's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
saxonnefragile's review against another edition
3.0
Pas tant, comme l'annonce le titre français, un brûlot sur la psychiatrie (blanche) à l'époque des droits civiques, mais l'étude sur 50 ans de l'hôpital de Ionia, qui permet de voir comment la schizophrénie a été associé aux Noirs Américains.
aubreyerin411's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
ralowe's review against another edition
4.0
busdriver: "this is a healthy exercise in recreational paranoia"ќ
my first early sketch of the review:
what proceeds is an elongated and askance view of double-consciousness from the vantage point of the clinic before it is at last admitted as such. the book shines in its exposМ© shadows of the ionia facility past and similar facilities in the future, murky dens of brutal institutionalized phrenology and other pressing backward genocidal hobbies. sociology's methods turn up twice as if just to be sneeringly satirical: ionia's archive exceeds his resource capacity to perform adequately. the author instead departs into anecdote over data, the subject matter being racism and all. what's interesting is how the author reminds the reader of the inadequacy of existing interpretive methodologies to assess and offer meaningful insight into the material and subjective morass of institutionalized racism.
[pending completion, straddling four stars (maybe teasing three because of the profiled out-takes of, we felt, half-hearted attempted sociological procedure; you don't have to be a sociologist if you don't want to. (and stop calling paul gilroy and michel foucault sociologists!))]
ralowe's actual review:
holy shit did i actually just read a sociological text with a *parasite* twist? must-read, five stars, won't spoil it: this twist, of course the regionally familiar being immune. don't spoil it! i won't spoil it here. read this in a reading group, this is a book to be shared and discussed. i screencapped and did the social media. especially pertinent as san francisco democratic party racist neocons penned increased police conservatorship powers throwing more law enforcement rather than public services at mental health, houselesness. as they plan to build a new jail and criminalize being emotionally vulnerable and black in public. good for anticolonial prison abolitionist disability political organizers to read as a model to conceptualize vital intersectional coalitions.
ralowe's actual review 2.0:
STOP TALKING ABOUT RAP PLEASE. [four stars.]
my first early sketch of the review:
what proceeds is an elongated and askance view of double-consciousness from the vantage point of the clinic before it is at last admitted as such. the book shines in its exposМ© shadows of the ionia facility past and similar facilities in the future, murky dens of brutal institutionalized phrenology and other pressing backward genocidal hobbies. sociology's methods turn up twice as if just to be sneeringly satirical: ionia's archive exceeds his resource capacity to perform adequately. the author instead departs into anecdote over data, the subject matter being racism and all. what's interesting is how the author reminds the reader of the inadequacy of existing interpretive methodologies to assess and offer meaningful insight into the material and subjective morass of institutionalized racism.
[pending completion, straddling four stars (maybe teasing three because of the profiled out-takes of, we felt, half-hearted attempted sociological procedure; you don't have to be a sociologist if you don't want to. (and stop calling paul gilroy and michel foucault sociologists!))]
ralowe's actual review:
holy shit did i actually just read a sociological text with a *parasite* twist? must-read, five stars, won't spoil it: this twist, of course the regionally familiar being immune. don't spoil it! i won't spoil it here. read this in a reading group, this is a book to be shared and discussed. i screencapped and did the social media. especially pertinent as san francisco democratic party racist neocons penned increased police conservatorship powers throwing more law enforcement rather than public services at mental health, houselesness. as they plan to build a new jail and criminalize being emotionally vulnerable and black in public. good for anticolonial prison abolitionist disability political organizers to read as a model to conceptualize vital intersectional coalitions.
ralowe's actual review 2.0:
STOP TALKING ABOUT RAP PLEASE. [four stars.]
wwiillddeerr's review against another edition
5.0
this is so fascinating and messed up and a very digestible non-fiction! it was for a class but like i definitely suggest anyone interested in psychiatry (or mental health or medicine or politics or social justice or anything) to read or at least skim this ! crazy stuff
nuhafariha's review against another edition
5.0
Race blindness is nothing new in medicine. It is this persistent idea that we form diagnoses for patients solely based on the presenting symptoms. But symptoms don't occur in isolation, they occur in conjunction with current day life, with political climates, with systemic issues. And oftentimes, system issues such as police brutality can lead to increased paranoia in Black males which is then read as "aggressive schizophrenia". This book is utterly brilliant and painstakingly etched out from archived medical records, medical advertisements, primary interviews and analysis. I loved every second of it. If I had a critique, it would be that Dr. Metzl doesn't go far enough. It is not only schizophrenia that has become racialized over time, but also diagnoses like "conduct disorder" or "antisocial personality disorder".