Originally, in the 20s and 30s, the stereotype of someone who was schizophrenic was the housewife who was sad and withdrawn, and would not do her duties as a housewife; would not do the housework. This was the typical case of schizophrenia. And then, in the 60s, something shifted. The actual criteria for schizophrenia shifted. A lot of psychiatrists and hospitals and police were encountering young, angry black men who were part of the civil rights movement. Who were part of the riots – the uprisings – in the Black Power movement. Who were angry. Who were perceiving a conspiracy of power against them, that was called paranoia. They would see it is white privilege, but it was called paranoia. And so we actually see the diagnositc criteria for schizophrenia change. So now you have anger and paranoia and hostility being included as criteria, whereas 30 years before they hadn’t been. Because the stereotype has changed. So there’s a way in which the DSM and the perspectives of the psychiatrists and the doctors who were giving these diagnoses is thoroughly politically constructed, and thoroughly dependent on the culture and context that they’re within.

“ — Will Hall at Unitarian Church Vancouver Canada March 2012 - Transcript | Madness Radio (via blinko) for anyone interested in reading more about how schizophrenia moved from being a diagnosis assigned to white, middle-class women to one used to pathologize and institutionalize noncompliant black men in the 1960s, jonathan metzl’s the protest psychosis: how schizophrenia became a black disease is a good place to start. i have a PDF scan of it, too — just ask. (via onegirlrhumba)