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
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 now converted to a prison. 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.

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]

References

^ Metzl, Jonathan (2010). The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease.
^ Wear, D. (2010). "The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease".
^ Luhrmann, T. M. (2010). "The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease".
^ Bell, Carl (1 August 2011). "The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease".
^ McKenzie, Kwame (July–September 2012). "Jonathan M. Metzl, The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease".
^ Fernando, Suman (21 October 2010). "Review – The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease".
^ Aultman, Julie (2010). "Review of Jonathan Metzl, The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease".
^ Wald, P. (2011). "Jonathan M. Metzl, the Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease".
^ "The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan Metzl".
^ Johnson, Frank (Fall 2012).
^ Sherry, Alissa (August 2011). "Book Review: Metzl, J. M. (2010). The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease".
^ Schneider, B. (2011). "Book review: J.M. Metzl, the Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease, Beacon Press: Boston, MA, 2010; 246 pp".
^ 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.

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)

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