Saturday, December 10, 2005

Racism Or Mental Illness?

Given that we have had some discussions here about the pathology of racism and whether or not it should be considered a mental illness, I found this article to be quite interesting and would like to know what others think.

Original Article Here

Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 10, 2005; A01



The 48-year-old man turned down a job because he feared that a co-worker would be gay. He was upset that gay culture was becoming mainstream and blamed most of his personal, professional and emotional problems on the gay and lesbian movement.

These fixations preoccupied him every day. Articles in magazines about gays made him agitated. He confessed that his fears had left him socially isolated and unemployed for years: A recovering alcoholic, the man even avoided 12-step meetings out of fear he might encounter a gay person.

"He had a fixed delusion about the world," said Sondra E. Solomon, a psychologist at the University of Vermont who treated the man for two years. "He felt under attack, he felt threatened."

Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis.

Advocates have circulated draft guidelines and have begun to conduct systematic studies. While the proposal is gaining traction, it is still in the early stages of being considered by the professionals who decide on new diagnoses.

If it succeeds, it could have huge ramifications on clinical practice, employment disputes and the criminal justice system. Perpetrators of hate crimes could become candidates for treatment, and physicians would become arbiters of how to distinguish "ordinary prejudice" from pathological bias.

Several experts said they are unsure whether bias can be pathological. Solomon, for instance, is uncomfortable with the idea. But they agreed that psychiatry has been inattentive to the effects of prejudice on mental health and illness.

"Has anyone done a word search for 'racism' in DSM-IV? It doesn't exist," said Carl C. Bell, a Chicago psychiatrist, referring to psychiatry's manual of mental disorders. "Has anyone asked, 'If you have paranoia, do you project your hostility toward other groups?' The answer is 'Hell, no!' "

The proposed guidelines that California psychologist Edward Dunbar created describe people whose daily functioning is paralyzed by persistent fears and worries about other groups. The guidelines have not been endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM); advocates are mostly seeking support for systematic study.

Darrel A. Regier, director of research at the psychiatric association, said he supports research into whether pathological bias is a disorder. But he said the jury is out on whether a diagnostic classification would add anything useful, given that clinicians already know about disorders in which people rigidly hold onto false beliefs.

"If you are going to put racism into the next edition of DSM, you would have enormous criticism," Regier said. Critics would ask, " 'Are you pathologizing all of life?' You better be prepared to defend that classification."

"I think it's absurd," said Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and the author of "PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine." Satel said the diagnosis would allow hate-crime perpetrators to evade responsibility by claiming they suffered from a mental illness. "You could use it as a defense."

Psychiatrists who advocate a new diagnosis, such as Gary Belkin, deputy chief of psychiatry at New York's Bellevue Hospital, said social norms play a central role in how all psychiatric disorders are defined. Pedophilia is considered a disorder by psychiatrists, Belkin noted, but that does not keep child molesters from being prosecuted.

"Psychiatrists who are uneasy with including something like this in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual need to get used to the fact that the whole manual reflects social context," said Belkin, who is planning to launch a study on pathological bias among patients at his hospital. "That is true of depression on down. Pathological bias is no more or less scientific than major depression."

Advocates for the new diagnosis also say most candidates for treatment, such as the man Solomon treated, are not criminals or violent offenders. Rather, they are like the young woman in Los Angeles who thought Jews were diseased and would infect her -- she carried out compulsive cleansing rituals and hit her head to drive away her obsessions. She realized she needed help but was afraid her therapist would be Jewish, said Dunbar, a Los Angeles psychologist who has amassed several case studies and treated several dozen patients for racial paranoia and other forms of what he considers pathological bias.

Another patient was a waiter so hostile to black people that he flung plates on the table when he served black patrons and got fired from multiple jobs.

A third patient was a Vietnam War veteran who was so fearful of Asians that he avoided social situations where he might meet them, Dunbar said.

"When I see someone who won't see a physician because they're Jewish, or who can't sit in a restaurant because there are Asians, or feels threatened by homosexuals in the workplace, the party line in mental health says, 'This is not our problem,' " the psychologist said. "If it's not our problem, whose problem is it?"

Opponents say making pathological bias a diagnosis raises the specter of social engineering -- brainwashing individuals who do not fit society's norms. But Dunbar and others say patients with disabling levels of prejudice should be treated for the same reason as are patients with any other disorder: They would feel, live and function better.

"They are delusional," said Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has long advocated such a diagnosis. "They imagine people are going to do all kinds of bad things and hurt them, and feel they have to do something to protect themselves.

"When they reach that stage, they are very impaired," he said. "They can't work and function; they can't hold a job. They would benefit from treatment of some type, particularly medication."

Doctors who treat inmates at the California State Prison outside Sacramento concur: They have diagnosed some forms of racist hatred among inmates and administered antipsychotic drugs.

"We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders," said Shama Chaiken, who later became a divisional chief psychologist for the California Department of Corrections, at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. "Treatment with antipsychotics does work to reduce these prejudices."

* * *

Amid a profusion of recent studies into the nature of prejudice, researchers have found that biases are very common. Almost everyone harbors what might be termed "ordinary prejudice," the research indicates.

Anthony Greenwald, a psychologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Mahzarin R. Banaji, a psychologist at Harvard, developed tests for such biases. By measuring the speed with which people make mental associations, the psychologists found that biases affect even those who actively resist them.

"When things are more strongly paired in our minds, we can respond to them more quickly," Banaji said. "Large numbers of Americans cannot as swiftly make the association between 'black' and 'good' as they can between 'white' and 'good.' "

Similarly, psychologist Margo Monteith at the University of Kentucky in Lexington found that people can have prejudices against groups they know nothing about. She administered a test in which volunteers, under time pressure, had to associate a series of words with either "America" or a fictitious country she called "Marisat."

Volunteers more easily associated Marisat with such words as "poison," "death" and "evil," while associating America with "sunrise," "paradise" and "loyal."

"A large part of our self-esteem derives from our group membership," Monteith said. "To the extent we can feel better about our group relative to other groups, we can feel good about ourselves. It's likely a built-in mechanism."

If biases are so common, many doctors ask, can racism really be a mental illness?

"I don't think racism is a mental illness, and that's because 100 percent of people are racist," said Paul J. Fink, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. "If you have a diagnostic category that fits 100 percent of people, it's not a diagnostic category."

But Poussaint said there is a difference between ordinary prejudice and pathological bias -- the same distinction that psychiatrists make between sadness and depression. All people experience sadness, anxiety and fear, but extreme, disabling forms of these emotions are called disorders.

While people with ordinary prejudice try very hard to conceal their biases, Solomon said, her homophobic patient had no embarrassment about his attitude toward gays. Dunbar said people with pathological prejudice often lack filtering capabilities. As a result, he said, they face problems at work and home.

"Everyone is inculcated with stereotypes and biases with cultural issues, but some individuals not only hold beliefs that are very rigid, but they are part of a psychological problem," Dunbar said.

The psychologist said he has helped such patients with talk therapy, which encourages patients to question the basis for their beliefs, and by steering them toward medications such as antipsychotics.

The woman with the bias against Jews did not overcome her prejudice, Dunbar said, but she learned to control her fear response in social settings. The patient with hostility against African Americans realized his beliefs were "stupid."

Solomon discovered she was most effective dealing with the homophobic man when she was nonjudgmental. When he claimed there were more gays and lesbians than ever before, she presented him with data showing there was no such shift.

At those times, she reported in a case study, the patient would say, "I know, I know." He would recognize that he was not being logical, but then get angry and return to the same patterns of obsession. Solomon did not identify the man because of patient confidentiality.

Standing in the central yard of the maximum-security California State Prison with inmates exercising around her, Chaiken explained how she distinguished pathological bias from ordinary prejudice: A prisoner who belonged to a gang with racist views might express such views to fit in with his gang, but if he continues "yelling racial slurs, assaulting others when it's clear there is no benefit" after he leaves the gang, the behavior was no longer "adaptive."

Prison officials declined to identify inmates who had been treated, or make them available for interviews.

Chicago psychiatrist Bell said he has not made up his mind on whether bias can be pathological. But in proposing a research agenda for the next edition of psychiatry's DSM of mental disorders, Bell and researchers from the Mayo Clinic, McGill University, the University of California at Los Angeles and other academic institutions wrote: "Clinical experience informs us that racism may be a manifestation of a delusional process, a consequence of anxiety, or a feature of an individual's personality dynamics."

The psychiatrists said their profession has neglected the issue: "One solution would be to encourage research that seeks to delineate the validity and reliability of racism as a symptom and to investigate the possibility of including it in some diagnostic criteria sets in future editions of DSM."

6 comments:

  1. I've always maintained that white supremacism is all based on some form of mental illness or defectiveness. Until all mental illnesses become treatable, you're always going to have a few white supremacist around.

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  2. Not wanting to be around nasty Assed Faggots is not defective or being Mentally ill. Hell, that is normal.

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  3. This is not a new hypothesis. A read about another study that was taking place three or four years ago. I don't know how I really feel about it. I do believe that racism is a sympton of some deep-seated emotional or psychological problems in many instances.

    But, you know, Harry, there are times when I run across one of these guys who I really don't believe are as racist as they claim. With some, I think they are just enamored with the shock effect.

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  4. Hummm. I think I just want everyone to get along. I do not think thats a mental illness.

    I think that's common sense. Though I am very Paranoid. And I am Agoraphobic. Which is why I am working at home and able to read this forum now and then at all.

    These two "conditions" result from childhood abuse and nothing anyone else did.

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  5. to nikki:

    you have posted what i consider your finest weblog article so far among the ones i have read in my short history of viewing your weblog website

    this article explains in the most accurately perfect manner what i have been assuming to be increasingly true within the jew dominated mental health institution they have originated and have greatly expanded and completely control today


    Thank you. I thought it was an important piece.

    So, you beleive that the mental health field is dominated and controlled by Jews? Do you have any references for this belief or are you just assuming this to be true? I am not being flippant here - I really would like to know.

    the jews have taken it upon themselves to decide what mental illness is, just as their jew communist brethren did so in soviet russia to socially engineer society into a soviet structured marxist state imprisoning those who opposed the soviet marxist agenda to the gulags and mental hospital prisons, so here in the united states and europe they are the ones to determine that white people who desire to cling to the conservative protestant established order of reality having begun with the white colonial heritage heroes and continuing up until about 45 years ago are now found guilty of being 'mentally ill' because they refuse the multi-culti kool-aid poison pill.

    And Hitler and his henchmen killed or enslaved those they considered mentally defective - often because they would not adhere to the protocols of the Reich. I don't think these people are targeting those who merely do not wish to interact with other races or religions. I think they are talking about those who are absolutely obsessed with race, religion, or sexual orientation and hold such a aversion to this as to be incapacitated.

    when the bottomless pit was opened up and the jew spawned upon the west to defecate their corrupt ideologies upon western civilization they seeded the sin clouds and the torrent thunderstorms of degenerate practices fueled the downfall of white western man, true to jewform the jews enriched themselves in their sinbusinesses (porn, drugs, etc etc)

    LOL! The metaphorical hyperbole is excellent, ajax. However, I cannot help but wonder how a race of people, as "superior" as you and others claim the white race to be, could allow a relatively small group of people, such as the Jews, to co completely outwit and out maneuver such "superior" minds.

    in order to control society and further open the floodgates to sin it was very logical to create an institution that would determine who could be taken away from society and be lobotimized until they would return as obedient drone dupes.

    So...are you saying that the Jews manufactured the mental health institution in some sort of "great conspiracy" to further an agenda of neutralizing opposition to their grand scheme? I just can't buy into such a belief.



    thus the 'mental health' industry was born a once tiny corner office in medical science reserved for truly lunatic mentally injured people many of whom needed to be commiteed to mental hospitals after having been found to be mentally incompetent and unable to function in society.

    Actually, I have a problem with the mental health entity. That problem has nothing to do with Jews or with some great conspiracy. It has to do with the number of labels they have come up with and they so generously place upon the populace. These labels have now become the source for many "excuses" for aberrant behaviors. Just think what an advantage this would be for you guys!

    now 100 years later the jewcontrolled mental health institution obediently executing their commands from the multi-culti cult overloards have come to the determination that white people who object to the feminized, homosexualized, third(turd)world glorifiying, black celebrating, white culture denying society being crammed down their throat are diagnosed (judged) as being 'mentally-ill'

    So, you don't believe that this diagnosis would be used on Black racists, or Jewish racists, or homosexual racists, etc.?

    it is a judgment far more palatable than civil or criminal wrongdoing, the 'mentally-ill' whites are not marked with a crime record they are condescended upon and spoon-fed the great lie that they are a dying race and culture and must adopt and adapt to the non-white and extreme left world future reality the multi-cultists are creating for mankind as part of the grand masterplan to bring about the utopian society the world marxists have been very paitently preparing and grooming mankind to inherit.

    Ajax, I have to ask - do you realize how utterly paranoid this all sounds to the rest of us? I understand that many of you have internalized this belief in a grand conspiracy and that you really do believe such a thing. Yet, when you present it to others whom you wish to convice, it is just so over-the top that we can't help but see the fear through the embroidery. It screams at us!

    Now, you will, undoubtedly, say that is because we have been indoctrinated by the Jews. But, that isn't true, ajax. Your fear screams at us because of the absurdity of your claim. It screams at us because you are an obviously intelligent human being whose world view is distorted and ruled by fear. To wit:

    i am certain biotechnology scientists are working on some pill to apply to the white race to make them surrender their racial identity and turn them into dopey smiley faced dumb-drones happy to have their white asses kicked by jew oligarchs and black feudal potentates

    FEAR.

    in the future any white who deliberately shuns non-whites as their personal life choice preference and maintains to themselves the truth that they are the superior race will be forced either into some form of lobotimized surgery (no doubt in time the neuro-scientists in their brain mapping perfection will locate that racial kinship loyalty neuron cell group structure) or have themselves sentenced to a term in a re-education camp until they return as racially passive baby children sipping the multi-culti poison from their non-white and racedead-whites and jew masters, perhaps a vaccine for 'racism' will be developed and little white babies will be forced to be injected

    FEAR

    marxism, communism, socialism, feminism, homosexualism, multiculturalism, abortion, all originated, promulgated and propagated by the jew, all with the intent and purpose to overthrow western civilization and the white race nation culture

    deny the whiteman his racial heritage and conservative ideology and moral principles, castrate and impotate, sodomize and make infertile, abort his progeny to reduce his demographic representation presence, apply the straightjacket upon him reducing him to a dutiful slave-drone


    FEAR

    in the immediate meantime dismiss (and by this remove his tongue so he is prohibitted from appealing his judgment) the whiteman's inherent understanding of his superior place and position amongst the races by condemning him as being 'mentally-ill', all of his proofs become dust, his proven case history and arguments fall on deaf ears and he is patted on the head by the smug condescension of his jew psychiatrist judges, handcuffed (white self will broken), muzzled(white voice silenced) and led away to be exterminated to fulfill the prophecy orated by Dr. Kamau Kambon

    FEAR

    The question now is, how rational is that fear? To me, this is the quintessence of irrational fear. And irrational fear presents all sorts of obstacles to daily life functioning.

    Ajax, you are a very intelligent individual with very passionate ideas. You are, I am sure, an asset to any group you may chose to affiliate with. I can't help but wonder, however, how you manage to get through day-to-day activities with this all-encompassing fear that you seem to have.

    Do I think you are demented? No. I think you are like so many others on the racist right - searching for the real truth and unable to see it through the rhetoric.

    The racist right has long doled out fear and conspiracy theories to each other and new recruits. Often, I believe that incapicitating racism has its' primary roots in fear. Fear is a debilitating emotion just like hate. It consumes and eventually destroys the vessel that it inhabits. Is racism a mental illness? I don't know. But irrational fear is.

    Many who join the racist right are those who need to belong somewhere. Many are disenfranchised and ostracised by mainstream society. Some have already been deemed as "misfits" by society. Fear is a powerful motivator - and the racist right has learned how to motivate those who are already marginal in their ability to associate and exist within the confines of societal expectations.

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  6. Ajax, this is turning into an excellent discussion and I have much to say regarding your last post. It will have to wait until tomorrow, however, as I have to take myself to dreamland.

    Keep a good thought.

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All comments must remain civil. No threats, racist epithets, or personal attacks will be tolerated. Rational debate, discourse, and even disagreement are all acceptable as long as they remain on point and within the realm of civility.