I really like hearing medical professionals place illness and healing in cultural context: while physical and mental suffering is undeniably real, so often the way distress manifests itself is shaped by the time and place in which those suffering are located (much like, kofkof, sexual orientation and gender identity/expression).
Likewise, Johnathan Metzl, author of the new book The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease charts the evolution of schizophrenia through the latter half of the twentieth century from being a disease of white female passivity to being associated with male aggression (and diagnosed disproportionately in African American men).
Transcript available at On the Media.
Check ’em out. Learn something new today.
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