NIH study to explore racism in mental health care in the South

Medical historian Kylie SmithAn associate professor at Emory University, he spent years studying the history of racial segregation in psychiatric hospitals, particularly in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi.

at her lesson”James H. Cassidy Lectures in Medical History: Jim Crow in Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South” She shares her research, such as the racist stereotypes that providers used to justify their treatment of black patients and the post-Civil War segregation that still plagued psychiatry throughout the South.

Most of the patients in these facilities were forced to do so and were unable to effectively challenge their detention in court. Instead, they were required to perform hard labor, subject to strict discipline and denied evidence-based treatment.

Trauma, time and mental health – new study reveals epidemic phenomenon

Psychiatric segregation did not end with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in federally funded institutions. It took a long legal battle and investigation that revealed the horrific treatment of patients whose health was tainted by racist assumptions and fears of mixing between black and white populations.

Smith draws a connection between the ways in which black patients are treated in those hospitals and the narrowing of modern disparities in health care that society sees as an evolving battleground. Even now, black patients are less likely to have mental health disorders and receive poorer mental health services.

Black patients are less likely than the general population to receive talk therapy or evidence-based medicine. basis For the American Psychiatric Association. They are also more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia and less likely to be diagnosed with a mood disorder than their white counterparts, according to the AP. And in one ResearchWhites in the South were nearly twice as likely to use mental health services as older blacks.

Presented by the National Library of Medicine, the hour-long lecture will also be archived on the NLM videocast website. Follow up on VideoCast.nih.gov.