Cultural differences can lead to differing diagnoses of mental illnesses in more ways than one. While Metzl argues that black patients do not receive the proper bipolar disorder diagnosis because clinicians view their symptoms as being related to schizophrenia due to implicit racism, Emily Martin argues that black patients do not receive the proper bipolar disorder diagnosis because white patients hold a monopoly on the diagnosis. In her book Bipolar Expeditions, Martin argues that clinicians and society as a whole feel more comfortable attributing negative stereotypes regarding schizophrenia and mental illness to black people than they do white people. After attending professional psychiatry meetings and interviewing several on their opinions
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Conversely, Martin seems to think that black people are not afforded the same idealization in regards to exhibiting mental illness. While summarizing psychiatrist Phillip Rack, she argues that “psychosis (here including mania) fits more comfortably with racialized blackness than it does with racialized whiteness” (Martin 215). In Martin’s analysis of race and mental illness, she comes to the conclusion that mania and its associated tributes are only perceived as attractive when they are not exhibited in black people. Otherwise, these symptoms are characteristics of schizophrenia. This cultural distinction is dangerous, as it prevents an entire demographic of people receiving the proper diagnosis.
Even when those with bipolar disorder are given the correct diagnosis, they still have to go through the process of accessing adequate treatment. More often than not, black individuals do not receive as much help as their white counterparts. However, this is not do to a lack of trying. As shown in "Inadequate Treatment of Black Americans with Bipolar Disorder,” a study by Kaja R. Johnson …show more content…
Doing so would involve “highlighting and helping to reverse gendered racial disparities that negatively impact the academic trajectory of Black students and increase the school-to-prison pipeline for Black (male) youth” (Beasley et al.). While the article in question is very general and not directly related towards highlighting and addressing bipolar disorder within the black community, it does however have a very novel idea in increasing the number of black clinicians who would be better equipped to handle and evaluate black manic-depressive patients. This model and idea can then be appropriated to address bipolar disorder specifically, given that a lot of the issues surrounding bipolar disorder do in fact come from the apparent inability by the medical field to properly address the mental illness within the specific demographic. This approach would help those dealing with bipolar disorder handle stressors such as “concentrated poverty, high rates of underemployment and unemployment, racial profiling, mistreatment and violence from law enforcement officials” (Beasley et al.), among others. The point of this approach is to handle and address bipolar disorder from an understanding and sympathetic viewpoint that many non-black clinicians, as Metzl has previously proven, would be
Conversely, Martin seems to think that black people are not afforded the same idealization in regards to exhibiting mental illness. While summarizing psychiatrist Phillip Rack, she argues that “psychosis (here including mania) fits more comfortably with racialized blackness than it does with racialized whiteness” (Martin 215). In Martin’s analysis of race and mental illness, she comes to the conclusion that mania and its associated tributes are only perceived as attractive when they are not exhibited in black people. Otherwise, these symptoms are characteristics of schizophrenia. This cultural distinction is dangerous, as it prevents an entire demographic of people receiving the proper diagnosis.
Even when those with bipolar disorder are given the correct diagnosis, they still have to go through the process of accessing adequate treatment. More often than not, black individuals do not receive as much help as their white counterparts. However, this is not do to a lack of trying. As shown in "Inadequate Treatment of Black Americans with Bipolar Disorder,” a study by Kaja R. Johnson …show more content…
Doing so would involve “highlighting and helping to reverse gendered racial disparities that negatively impact the academic trajectory of Black students and increase the school-to-prison pipeline for Black (male) youth” (Beasley et al.). While the article in question is very general and not directly related towards highlighting and addressing bipolar disorder within the black community, it does however have a very novel idea in increasing the number of black clinicians who would be better equipped to handle and evaluate black manic-depressive patients. This model and idea can then be appropriated to address bipolar disorder specifically, given that a lot of the issues surrounding bipolar disorder do in fact come from the apparent inability by the medical field to properly address the mental illness within the specific demographic. This approach would help those dealing with bipolar disorder handle stressors such as “concentrated poverty, high rates of underemployment and unemployment, racial profiling, mistreatment and violence from law enforcement officials” (Beasley et al.), among others. The point of this approach is to handle and address bipolar disorder from an understanding and sympathetic viewpoint that many non-black clinicians, as Metzl has previously proven, would be