Afro Caribbeans and Schizophrenia: How Does Psychiatry Deal With Issues of Race, Culture and Ethnicity?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the various ways in which British Afro Caribbeans are disadvantaged in their encounter with psychiatry. It suggests that far from being monolithic and institutional, racism must be deconstructed and traced to the actions, practices and procedure involved in specific encounters. The procedures of psychiatry are examined through the discourses of psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology. From this analysis it is suggested that psychiatry's relationship to Afro Caribbean populations in Britain arises from the ways in which psychiatry conceptualises notions of ethnicity, race and cultural difference, as well as ways in which it organises and reproduces itself as a form of therapeutic intervention.