Metzl includes numerous historical instances of government institutions codifying mental illness as threats to social order. From Soviet Russia using a schizophrenia diagnosis to silence political dissidents, to French governments using mental illness as an excuse to oppress colonized subjects in Algeria, history is riddled with examples of governments maintaining the social power hierarchies by medically subjugating deviants. Importantly, he also notes that there is an extensive history of troubling arguments of black mental illness in America. As early as the mid-nineteenth century, medical authorities were explaining that black slaves were biologically unable to live in freedom. Slaves who attempted to escape servitude supposedly had a treatable
