|
Vanessa Jackson.
excerpted from: Vanessa Jackson, "In
Our Own Voices: African American Stories of Oppression, Survival and
Recovery in the Mental Health System", pp 1-36, p. 4-8 http://www.mindfreedom.org/mindfreedom/jackson.shtm
l(Last visited: March 20, 2002)(citations omitted)
A review of the history of mental health includes few
references to the African-American experience. Robert Meinsma's Brief
History of Mental Therapy offers a review of philosophical and medical
views on mental illness dating back to 600 BC that includes nearly a
thousand entries. However, this very comprehensive document boasts fewer
than five entries pertaining to the experiences of people of African
descent. A similar criticism can be offered of the timeline compiled by
the American Psychological Association. African-Americans have presence in
America dating back to at least1619 when the first African indentured
servants arrived in America. This chapter attempts to supplement the
official records by offering a few accounts of African-American
psychiatric survivors' experiences, and the philosophy and policies that
guided the treatment of our ancestors and which still influence our
treatment today.
A review of the history of African-American psychiatric
survivors would quickly disabuse a reader of the notion that the process
of recording history is apolitical. One of the earliest records dealing
with the issue of insanity among African-Americans was in1745 when the
South Carolina Colonial assembly took up the case of Kate, a slave woman,
who had been accused of killing a child. After being placed in the local
jail, it was determined that Kate was "out of her Senses" and
she was not brought to trail. However, the problem of how to care for Kate
was an issue since her owner was too poor to pay for her confinement and
South Carolina had made no provision for the public maintenance of slaves.
Ultimately, the colonial assembly passed an act that made each parish in
the colony responsible for the public maintenance of lunatic slaves whose
owners were unable to care for. Not surprisingly, there is no further
record of what happened to Kate or what circumstances led to the murder of
the child.
Scientific Racism
Benjamin Rush, MD (17461813), signer of the Declaration
of Independence, Dean of the Medical School at the University of
Pennsylvania and the "Father of American Psychiatry, "described
Negroes as suffering from an affliction called Negritude, which was
thought to be a mild form of leprosy. The only cure for the disorder was
to become white. It is unclear as to how many cases of Negritude were
successfully treated. The irony of Dr. Rush's medical observations was
that he was a leading mental health reformer and co-founder of the first
anti-slavery society in America. Dr. Rush's portrait still adorns the
official seal of the American Psychiatric Association. However, Dr Rush's
observation-"The Africans become insane, we are told, in some
instances, soon after they enter upon the toils of perpetual slavery in
the West Indies"-is not often cited in discussions of mental illness
and African-Americans, how-ever valuable it might be in understanding the
traumatic impact of enslavement and oppression on Africans and their
descendants.
In1851, Dr. Samuel Cartwright, a prominent Louisiana
physician and one of the leading authorities in his time on the medical
care of Negroes, identified two mental disorders peculiar to slaves. Drapetomia,
or the disease causing Negroes to run away, was noted as a condition,
"unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptom,
the absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers.
" Dr. Cartwright observed, "The cause in most cases, that
induces the Negro to run 4 away
from service, is such a disease of the mind as in any other species of
alienation, and much more curable, as a general rule. " Cartwright
was so helpful as to identify preventive measures for dealing with
potential cases of drapetomania. Slaves showing incipient drapetomania,
reflected in sulky and dissatisfied behavior should be whipped-strictly as
a therapeutic early intervention. Planter and overseers were encouraged to
utilize whipping as the primary intervention once the disease had
progressed to the stage of actually running away. Overall, Cartwright
suggested that Negroes should be kept in a submissive state and treated
like children, with "care, kindness, attention and humanity, to
prevent and cure them from running away. "
Dr. Cartwright also diagnosed Dysaethesia Aethiopica, or "hebetude
of the mind and obtuse sensibility of the body-a disease peculiar to
Negroes called by overseers-Rascality. " Dysethesia Aethiopica
differed from other species of mental disease since physical signs and
lesions accompanied it. The ever-resourceful Dr. Cartwright determined
that whipping could also cure this disorder. Of course, one wonders if the
whipping were not the cause of the "lesions" that confirmed the
diagnosis. Not surprisingly, Dr. Cartwright was a leading thinker in the
pro-slavery movement. Dr. Cartwright, in his article "Diseases and
Peculiarities of the Negro Race, " chided his anti-slavery colleagues
by noting "The northern physicians and people have noticed the
symptoms, but not the disease from which they spring. They ignorantly
attribute the symptoms to the debasing influence of slavery on the mind
without considering that those who have never been in slavery, or their
fathers before them, are the most afflicted, and the latest from the
slave-holding south the least. The disease is the natural offspring of
Negro liberty-the liberty to be idle, to wallow in filth, and to indulge
in improper food and drinks. "
Drapetomania and Dysethesia Aethiopica could be relegated
to obscurity along with the spinning chair and other ridiculous
assumptions about mental illness and its treatment if African-Americans
were not constantly assaulted by updated efforts to put social and
economic issues into a medical framework that emphasizes our " pathology.
" In the late1960s, Vernon Mark, William Sweet and Frank Ervin
suggested that urban violence, which most African-Americans perceived as a
reaction to oppression, poverty and state-sponsored economic and physical
violence against us, was actually due to "brain dysfunction, "
and recommended the use of psychosurgery to prevent outbreaks of violence.
Clearly, the spirit of Dr. Cartwright was alive, well and receiving
federal research grants. Drs. Alvin Poussaint and Peter Breggin were two
outspoken opponents of the updated "Drapetomania" theory, along
with hundreds of psychiatric survivors who took to the streets to protest
psychosurgery abuses. The issue of brain dysfunction as a cause of poor
social conditions in African-American and Latino communities continues to
crop up in the federally funded Violence Initiatives of the1990s and
current calls for psychiatric screening for all children entering juvenile
justice facilities. Exposing scientific racism is essential to protecting
us from further psychiatric abuses and facilitating resolution of social,
political and economic problems without blaming the victims of oppression.
In1895, Dr. T. O. Powell, Superintendent of the Georgia
Lunatic Asylum, reported an alarming increase in insanity and consumption
among Negroes in Georgia. Dr. Powell noted that these conditions were
virtually unheard of among Negroes up to1860. A comparison of census
records between1860 and1890 showed that insanity among Negroes had
increased from one in10, 584 to one in 943. Dr. Powell believed that the hygienic
and structured lives led by slaves served as protective factors against
consumption and insanity. According to Dr. Powell, "Freedom, however,
removed all hygienic restraints, and they were no longer obedient to the
inexorable laws of health, plunging into all sort of excesses and vices,
leading irregular lives, and having apparently little or no control over
their appetites and passions. "To sum it up, freedom made us nuts.
Apparently, Powell failed to factor abject poverty, further disruption of
family and kinship ties, racism, and terrorism into the high rates of
insanity.
The1840 census revealed dramatically increased rates of
insanity among free blacks. African-American physician James McCune Smith
challenged the findings of 1840 census, which was frequently used by
pro-slavery writers to confirm that enslavement was beneficial to slaves.
Dr. Smith wrote, "Freedom has not made us `mad. ' It has strengthened
our minds by throwing us upon our own resources. "
What role did the need for cheap labor to staff
psychiatric hospitals play in the incarceration of former slaves? The
Georgia Lunatic Asylum, which would come to be known as the largest
lunatic asylum in the word, was operated exclusively by slave labor
from18411847, when the first white attendants were hired. The slave
attendants and help-patients were a critical adjunct to hospital staff.
Other factors that may have influenced the rates of insanity following the
Civil War were starvation and poor nutrition, which led to pellagra, a
niacin deficiency with symptoms of loss of appetite, irritability and
mental confusion. This disease disproportionately affected poor and
displaced former slaves.
The Colored Hospital
African-Americans were frequently housed in public (as
opposed to private) facilities such as the poorhouse, jail or the insane
asylum. These facilities almost always had substandard conditions. If
conditions in the facility were poor for white patients, conditions were
completely inhumane for African-American patients. For instance, one of
the first patients admitted to the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum in1829
was a fourteen-year-old slave named Jefferson. Jefferson's name was not
recorded in the admission book and he was reportedly housed in the yard.
The young slave was admitted as a favor to his owner since the facility
did not officially receive blacks.
The issue of housing Black and white mental patients in
the same facility was a struggle in both Northern and Southern States
since many leading mental health experts felt that it undermined the
mental health of white patients to be housed with African-Americans. The
distress of having Blacks and white patients in close proximity to one
another was balanced by the unwillingness to fund segregated facilities
for black patients.
In March1875, the North Carolina General Assembly
appropriated $10, 000 to build a colored insane asylum. The Eastern Asylum
for the Colored Insane was opened in1880 with accommodations for four
hundred and twenty patients. The facility at Goldsboro underwent several
name changes throughout its history and remains in operation as a
psychiatric facility. In1925, Junius Wilson, a seventeen-year-old, deaf
and mute black man was accused of rape, castrated and remanded for
incarceration at Goldsboro by a" lunacy jury. "The rape charges were
eventually dropped in the1970s and at some point authorities realized that
Mr. Wilson was neither mentally ill nor retarded-simply hearing impaired.
In1994, at the age of 86, Mr. Wilson was moved to a cottage on the grounds
of the facility (now known as the Cherry Hospital). The move to the
cottage was the state's effort to make up for Mr. Wilson's 72-year
incarceration. He died there in March of 2001.
Virginia established an asylum for the "colored
insane" in Petersburg that received its first patients in April 1885.
At that time there were approximately four hundred "insane
Negroes" in the state, all of whom were cared for in the Petersburg
facility. Apparently little concern was given to the ability of family and
friends throughout the state to visit their loved ones at the facility
that was so far from home for so many.
The Alabama Insane Hospital was not for the exclusive use
of African-Americans, but to accommodate the increasing number of
African-American patients, separate facilities were created on the
grounds. In1897, Dr. T. O. Powell reported that the Alabama facility had
about three hundred and fifty African-American patients. The facility
maintained a "colony" of one hundred African-American men about
two miles from the main facility. Dr. Powell noted, "They are
contented, are the healthiest class of patients under this management and
by their farm labor contribute to the support of the institution. "
It is interesting to note that the positive presentation of the "colony
farm" obscures the reality that the primary "treatment" provided
to these African-American male patients was hard physical labor. It seems
odd that individuals who had been incarcerated in an asylum due to their
insanity were able perform tasks that must have required some degree of
skill and focus.
Dr. James Lawrence Thompson, in his memoir of life at the
South Carolina State Hospital, noted "It was customary to employ as
many of the patients as possible-those who were in condition to work-both
male and female, white and colored. The white females would make beds,
sweep the floors, sew, work in the kitchen and even sweep the yards. The
colored females would work on the wards in various ways and in the
laundry. The colored males did most of the rough work, such as working on
the farm, cutting wood and the like. The white males were somewhat
handicapped in their work as it was not customary to have the white and
colored males working together and we did not have land enough to have the
white males work on the farm, hence they were confined to work mostly in
cleaning up the yards and moving trash from about the building. "
Perhaps patients, both African-American and white, could have benefited
more from the restorative power of gainful employment provided in their
own communities and with adequate financial compensation.
The state of Maryland opened its hospital for the colored
insane in1911near Crownsville, MD. The first patients were composed of12
patients from the Spring Grove facility and112 inmates from jails or other
asylums. The inmates, who lived in a temporary camp while they began to
clear the land and operate the farm, built the facility. It was noted that
Dr. Robert Winterode decided to "entrust" the patients with axes and
tools to complete the construction. Prior to the opening of the
Crownsville facility, African-American patients were housed in segregated
facilities on other facilities and in local jails. At the turn of the
century, African-American males at Maryland's Spring Grove facility often
spent up to eight months living in tents, made with patient labor, on the
grounds. A cottage for African-American females was completed at
SpringGrove in1906.
In1919, Rusk State Penitentiary in Texas was turned into a
hospital for the "Negro insane. "The facility achieved
notoriety when, on April16, 1955, a group of African-American prisoners in
the maximum-security unit rebelled and took over the hospital for five
hours. The rebellion was led by nineteen-year-old Ben Riley, who
articulated inmate demands for better counseling, organized exercise
periods, an end to prisoner beatings, and that all inmates have the same
rights enjoyed by the white inmates regarding meals, bathing and freedom
of movement. The article in the Austin Statesman reflects the power
of having control of the media: it stated that the prisoners had "no
specific complaints, " and described Ben Riley as the "leader of
the gang of criminally insane Negroes" and as someone who "likes
to exhibit his muscles. " Readers get the sense that the reporter was
barely restraining himself from calling the young leader a "big Black
buck. "The Austin Statesman's article is accompanied by a
photo of a shirtless Riley with a caption that notes that the man was
pointing to scars on another inmate that were reportedly caused by a
beating. Is it possible that Riley was not just taking the opportunity to
"exhibit his body" but was showing his own scars?
During the siege, the inmates reportedly hooked the
hospital superintendent up to the electroshock machine and attempted to
deliver maximum voltage to him. The superintendent escaped injury when the
inmates pushed the right button but failed to set the spring correctly. In
her well researched book on the Texas State Lunatic Asylum, it is notable
that author Sarah Sitton fails to note that Rusk State Hospital was
established to serve African-American patients. Sitton is very sympathetic
to the plight of attendants dealing with threats of violence from
African-American prisoners but shows little concern for the violence
perpetrated against African-American inmates.
This section is not intended to imply that the only place
where African-Americans experienced the psychiatric system was within
facilities. The history of institutional-based treatment is simply better
documented than other interventions provided to-or abuses perpetrated
against- African-American psychiatric survivors. There is a rich history
regarding natural healing and spirituality that needs further exploration
to fully understand the efforts used in the community to honor and heal
mental illness and trauma reactions. |
