471E4--Week 10 Questions/Comments--Thursday

On page 162, the author talks about the role of white, middle-class housewives. I think he brings a good point that not only was the housewife rule the norm in society but it was also what was desired of most women during that time. I tend to have the notion that women were unhappy and bored (which I am sure some were) but I forget that this was many women’s goal in life, to be a good wife and mother. Alice was one of the few that might have had other desires that she kept secret from her family which made her lose it. –Courtney Collier On page 165, it says that schizophrenia was more defined by what it was not rather than what it actually was. I think this can apply still too many individuals today. I know in many cases doctors will cross off what the person/child does not do and just put them in a category. –Courtney Collier I felt so bad for Otis James’s brother Gerald. He kept writing the hospital and they refused to let his brother out or even transfer him. This case is contrasting to the usually overfriendly reports that family members get from institutions that sugarcoat everything. Would it would be a fair assumption that the hospital didn’t respond quickly to Gerald James because of his race? Or was that the norm for anyone staying at Ionia/Riverside? –Courtney Collier I like that this book points out how easy it seems to be able to change the wording of a mental disorder. Schizophrenia went from describing housewives who were not doing their duties anymore to what was perceived as violent black men. It seems you can just alter the description of a disorder to best fit the patient. Are there any other disorders that have changed description to fit a different group of people, or is schizophrenia the only one? - Morgan H.  This was mentioned in class briefly I believe about how the experiences of white men and black women are left out of the book. Does it really impact the book what happened during this time or since the author is trying to argue that schizophrenia changed from a white woman’s disease to a black man’s, is it okay? But then it seems to me that the title of the book should be “How Schizophrenia Became a Black Male Disease.” - Morgan H. I thought the second part of the book was much more convincing because it wasn't just certain cases within the hospital but Metzl discussed how mental illness has affected our media. The discussion over songs really interested me because so many songs have mentions of mental illness. Often, these mentions are in a joking manner or used to describe behavior of someone such as rap songs describing a woman. The reality is that many song's even today mention mental illness and as listeners, we listen to the music without truly understanding the words such as "she is schizophrenic". I found one song that described a guy saying he could be a girl's straightjacket. Language such as this is used in our media and it makes me wonder, have we become so used to it that we don't recognize it? - Maggie Nunn The parallel between the rise of riots during the Civil Rights Movement and the institutionalization of black men is interesting. It makes me wonder if more black men were put in the institution at this time as a way to try and deter the movement?- Maggie Nunn On page 165, "That lesson is: the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s altered assumptions not only about what schizophrenia looked like, but also what it did not." This quote is incredibly powerful because I think it's still applicable today. It was implying who could have schizophrenia and allowed for people such as the white housewives to be excluded.- Maggie Nunn Deinstitutionalization was very prominent during this time, in the height of its popularity. Was the process at Ionia different at all considering it was a hospital for the criminally insane? Was deinstitutionalization racist in any way considering blacks as schizophrenics? ~ Emily Barry Metzl lost all credibility with me after reading, on pg 140-141, his brief explanation for the Detroit riots. To drive his point home he hints at police injustice (towards blacks) by raiding a welcome home party and arresting the revelers. In fact, they raided an unlicensed bar (called a “blind pig”) not expecting the crowd partying inside. The bar owner’s son, by his own admission, threw a bottle at the police sparking the riots. Metzl doesn’t mention this though, extremely disingenuous and disappointing. –Scott Campbell It’s hard not to read Metzl’s case remarks as apologetic, that the men locked in prison/the asylum were there only because of a racist system out to get them and not by their own criminal actions. I think he would have a stronger argument if he looked at a regular asylum instead and studied the patients with schizophrenia, how they were broken down along race, etc. –Scott Campbell I don’t think rappers were actually thinking of schizophrenia’s “historical charge,” particularly in regards to what Metzl claims is a racist metaphor, when writing their lyrics. –Scott Campbell On page 142, Metzl supplies notes from the analysis of James’ evaluation. I wish that in place there were the actual dialogue between them. Was he just saying, “Allah Akbar,” and refusing to answer their questions purposefully or was he legitimately losing it? The way it is presented it seems as if he was tactfully refusing to answer but I’m skeptical of it. – Katie Tryon On 145, Metzl ponders the thought that the black Muslims supplied the language that was associated with the schizophrenia diagnosis. I wish he had expanded on this thought and dug a little deeper. – Katie Tryon Did anyone else notice that “well groomed” is listed as one of the symptoms of the 1970s? Was this a typo? – Katie Tryon "The inquiry board found that Ionia housed 987 patients in excess of their sentences without valid rationale." Is this against the patients will or did the patients willingly stay in the hospital?For overcrowding in hospitals to be such an issue, I find it difficult to believe that patients were allowed to stay there if there was no reason for them to be there. How common was this in other institutions? -Carly W. "They became the embodied sites of institutional memory" (136). In reference to the men who did not qualify in the deinstitutionalization process...I just found this quote interesting. --Carly W. I agree with Scott, many of these men committed crimes and were not subjected to just a racist system. That is least to say that there was no racism in the system. It especially wrong to pick and choose, which cases best fit Metzl argument. I believe he could have proven a stronger thesis with broader implications. Do you believe the author would have had stronger validation if he expanded his research outside of Michigan or simply by sticking to the asylum system and not the prison system? Additionally, I don’t think it would be a bad idea to double-check a few of Metzl’s sources. –Jack Hylan In chapter 18, Metzel discusses law changes that help proliferate the notion that schizophrenia was a Black male disease. My question is does law follow society or does society follow the law? Can we say there is causal relationship between the two? - Kasey Curious about case notes on p.170. Otis James/A R Karim is described as sexually weak and inadequate. Considering that sexually aggressive tendencies fall in line with the stereotype of black men as violent animals, wouldn't this be a sign that the treatment is heading in the "right" direction? --Stef L. Metzl (talking about sociologists) states that, “whiteness is the control group, the assumed norm” (165). In this case, Alice is the assumed norm- the “base case” as I described it. Alice’s case is hand-picked for its gendered and racial qualities. I think Metzle thesis might have been better made if white male or blackness as the control group. He had all the information to break it down further to show it was due to racial changes and not gender changes. I just think his argument would be strong if he broke it down more or incorporated more patient information; even his charts/graphs don’t break it down between male and female and, yet, he talks about the definition taking on more masculine tone. I want to know more about black women and schizophrenia (where do they fall in the change of the term from a white female issue to a black male issue)!? – Kasey Moore I agree, I am unsure of the strength of Metzl's argument. I agree that terms such as "schizophrenia" have definitions that change with time and society,but as Maggie mentioned, stating that rappers use the term in lyrics and are perpetuating the stigma of blacks as schizophrenic...that seems like such a stretch to me. Moreso than pop music, hip hop and rap usually have some sort of message to convey, often politic or some social commentary, and loaded words often provide good metaphors or strength expression. I found the majority of Metzl's work to be confusing in its constant change of subject and disconnected writing style. --Chelsea Chin

Metzl mentions how there are ethnic and racial differences in the expression of schizophrenia and that these differences could explain why doctors and nurses used different symptoms to describe the schizophrenia found in white and black patients. However, he does not go further into detail or provide concrete proof as to why these differences exist (or if they are even real). Another comment on the writing style- using the first person narrative voice weakens his argument and makes it seem as if the entire book is a story rather than an analysis. -- Chelsea Chin

It's very interesting that references to schizophrenia as a cultural issue survive in rap lyrics. I know I've heard such songs, but I never thought about it until Metzl mentioned it. His comparison of the different mental illnesses in music lyrics and the race of the artist that produced the song was easier for me to understand than a lot of the book. -Joanna Jourdan

Some part of Metzl's linguistic analysis of records concerns me. He presents differences in wording used between the records of white and black patients, but he only read a sample of records, not all of them. I can't help but think about the possibility that the records he found may not have been representative. Perhaps he selected words that he found especially disturbing from the records of black patients, but missed words in white records that were equally disturbing for different reasons. -Joanna Jourdan