Thoughts from an African Graduate Student in Clinical Mental Health Counseling
Introduction
The field of psychology in the West is rooted in racism, white supremacy, ableism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and many other structures of power or domination which only serve neoliberal interests—culminating into what we know now as the mental health industrial complex. Many believe that the psychology of today has grown since the introduction of lobotomies and electroshock therapy, but it is quite the contrary—it has pivoted to prioritize profitability and palatability, “numbing” the masses through the overuse of psychiatric medications, normalizing therapeutic practices that gaslight those experiencing the exploitative conditions of life under capitalism. These practices maintain the worker’s ability to produce for the capitalist means of production, even if it comes at the cost of one’s life.
At its core, the normalized and exploitative psychiatric industry, along with the healthcare system that sustains it, is a direct product of capitalism.
“… the psy-professions are responsible for facilitating the maximization of profit for the ruling class while individualizing the social and economic conditions of the workers. The mental health system seeks to normalize the fundamentally oppressive relationship of capitalism by focusing on the individual—rather than the society—as pathological and in need of adjustment through ‘treatment’ options such as drugs, ECT, and therapy.” (Cohen, 19)
Because the psy-professions—psychotherapists, school counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers—are intrinsically linked to capitalism, they serve only to police deviance, reinforce and normalize exploitation, and act as a form of social control.
Psychiatry and White Supremacy: A Historical View
During the 18th and 19th centuries, white psychiatrist Samuel A. Cartright hypothesized that runaway enslaved Africans suffered from a mental disorder he called drapetomania. Cartright also believed they suffered from dysaesthesia aethiopis, which pathologized enslaved Africans as being “lazy” and “showing a lack of respect for rights of property.”
This enforced the idea that enslaved Africans disrespected “property rights” by the act of running away, thus rendering those with “ownership” of their bodies, “property-less.” He argued that enslavement was actually beneficial for Africans, so anyone who would want to flee had to be “mad” or “crazy.” He prescribed corrective measures to combat these illnesses, including whipping, hard labor, and, in extreme cases, amputation of the toes. (Metzl, 2009, p. 30)
The field of psychiatry intended to normalize the brutal living conditions of oppressed people and prescribe abhorrent “treatment” in order to maintain the profitability and stability of chattel slavery.
The psy-profession is an extension of the white supremacist-capitalist hegemonic entity, serving to normalize the mental and physical reactions to the material conditions of colonized peoples.
On Productivity
Capitalism seeks the maximization of profit—perpetual growth. However, this “infinite growth” is not possible without the exploitation of the proletariat and of colonized peoples globally. The ruling class does not care about anyone’s livelihood or well-being, aside from their own, but they recognize the instability of the system they built and uphold.
To combat this, they sell people reformist “solutions” to escape their immediate conditions under a capitalist hellscape. Neoliberalism has become so ingrained as the practice and principle of daily life and is only further legitimized through psy-professional tactics packaged as self-help, therapy, and healing.
We have seen the uncritical promotion of therapy talk such as “rest is resistance” or “you don’t owe anyone anything,” as well as the commodification of self-care. Sure, it’s great to take time for yourself, rest, and take a nice bath, but it is not a means of justifying willful ignorance and complacency with life under capitalism. This reinforces hyper-individualism while also disregarding any idea of community care and collectivism.
As a result, symptoms of life under capitalism are pathologized as mental unwellness which are issues at the individual level that do not factor in social forces of power.
The Pathologization of Resistance
The pathologization of mental illness allows the effects of capitalism to be treated as broken or dysfunctional symptoms that need to be fixed by internal medicine.
Not only are people’s illnesses pathologized by possible “chemical imbalances” in the brain, negative thought processes, or habits, but they are also prescribed medication to mitigate symptoms. Many mental health professionals profit from diagnosis and prescriptions via insurance and ultimately see clients as money. Like the medical industry, they profit from their trauma while doing little to help their material conditions.
Psychiatric medication has been framed as a “cure-all”—just have to fix a few things internally and you will be as good as new. Rather than dismantle and critique the system that exacerbates or causes said illness, psy-professionals are encouraged to “numb” clients from the psychological and physiological effects of capitalism. Psy-professionals thus manage and optimize labor efficiency by shrouding capitalism’s contribution to psychological distress.
Complete Disregard for Genocide and Imperialism
As a current graduate student who is entering the mental health-focused psy-professional field, I have observed the astonishing and blatant disregard of ongoing genocides transpiring in Palestine, Sudan, and the Congo. There has not been any conversation about the effect of global, traumatic violence as we bear witness to mass genocide aside from neutral takes (which serve the oppressor) made by licensed professionals on Psychology Today, Instagram, or TikTok. You cannot remain neutral on genocide. Palestinians have endured the perpetual murder, displacement, bombardment, imprisonment, and sexual violence of thousands of friends & loved ones at the hands of the zionist entity funded and sustained by the United States.
If these professionals truly cared about wellness, the psy-profession would be one of the loudest speaking on the long-term mental impacts of genocide. But I guess protesting genocide is not a “profitable” endeavor.
Policing Deviance & Use of Surveillance
Since the American Psychiatric Association’s conception of the DSM-I in the 1950s to the present, there has been an increased implementation of words/phrases related to protests and acts of political violence. This terminology serves to pathologize victims of political violence and those who respond in kind, individualizing the re/actions to systems of oppression The words, “rioters”, “looters”, “criminals”, “thugs”, “terrorists”, have been invoked across major news outlets like Fox News, CNN, and social media to demonize oppression by the state– like how protests following the murder of Michael Brown, George Floyd, and countless others were labeled as “race riots” to vilify those reacting to racial violence. In fact, in the late 1960s, white psychiatrists Walter Bromberg and Frank Simon coined the term protest psychosis (Metzl, 2009, p.101), to describe Black men who had been driven to “insanity” by the Black Power movement. In an article published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, Bromberg and Simon noted:
“The particular symptomatology we have observed, for which the term ‘protest psychosis’ is suggested, is influenced by social pressures (the Civil Rights Movement), dips into religious doctrine (the black Muslum Group), is guided in content by African subcultural ideologies and is colored by a denial of Caucasian values and hostility thereto. This protest psychosis among prisoners is virtually a repudiation of ‘white civilization’.”
The psy-profession has historically played a major role in the pathologization and misdiagnosis of those who combat and compromise the white supremacist state. During the Civil Rights Movement, the fascist state and its policing apparatus were put on full display, and again during contemporary BLM movements. Even with all eyes on the state, “professionals” still successfully pathologized righteous anger by blaming “uprisings” and “protests” as symptoms of a psychological disorder like schizophrenia, BPD, or PTSD. The psy-profession catered to an already white nation, fed into their implicit racial biases and fear of Black people as “violent,” and villainized the movement, its leaders, and those who dared to support it.
These atrocities should not be normalized, they should not be treated as something that is “out of our control”. There is no amount of meditation or breathing exercises that will mitigate the physical, psychological, and sexual violence enacted on Black and Indigenous folks across the world. Our reactions are not because we are “brainwashed,” in fact, it is those who continue to ignore ongoing genocide and enslavement at home and abroad, who endorse and normalize fascism.
One of the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-V for 300.15 Other Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD), notes that individuals “suffering” from this diagnosis suffer “Identity disturbance due to prolonged and intense coercive persuasion”, such forms of persuasion are “thought reform, indoctrination while captive, torture…” (Cohen, p. 195). The psy-profession can only conceptualize/pathologize a person, who might be persuaded to change (their mind) due to their material conditions under capitalism, as suffering from delusions, and thus, mentally unwell.
To connect the historical pathologization of acts of protests to recent history, Aaron Bushnell comes to mind. Aaron Bushnell self-immolated on February 25th, 2024, as a form of protest in response to not only the ongoing genocide in Palestine but also the United States’ complicity in oppression across the globe. News outlets attempted to push the narrative that Aaron was “not of sound mind”, or “suffered from schizophrenia,” or even suicidal. Again, psy-professionals and social media attempted to pathologize a person for protesting genocide. This narrative served as a means of encouraging people to superficially check in on or keep tabs on friends and family who were protesting because they could be “unstable.” This is simply encouraging surveillance and again, pathologizing righteous anger.
The APA introduced Antisocial Personality Disorder into the DSM-I to “pathologize and irrationalize criminal behavior…”, made evident by the diagnostic criteria utilized throughout the versions of the DSM. DSM-V diagnosis pictured:
Jargon villainizes those who may question normalized conditions under the capitalist system and react against them. Instead, the system works to neutralize changes that would threaten power. This demonstrates the policing power of the psy-professions– in policing deviance.
For those in the psy-professions, certain ethical responsibilities are required such as mandated reporter duties. For a mandated reporter, a client that shares any of the following: are/have been sexually/physically abused, or seen another person be sexually/physically abused, are experiencing or are aware of child neglect, thoughts of suicide, self-harm, thoughts of harming others, must be reported under their respective Code of Ethics, such as ACA, ASCA, APA, NASW. While this is portrayed as seemingly well-intentioned, it lacks nuance and ultimately serves to police deviance, be a tool for surveillance, and strip folks of their bodily control/loss of bodily autonomy which we see from slavery to mass incarceration. Clinicians already have inherent power in the relationship dynamic, and “forcing” them to abide by a Code of Ethics that serves neoliberalism, leaves the space for the power of policing to go to their heads, which often happens, especially to clients of color. Clients are then placed on a psychiatric hold for days or even weeks, or even worse, arrested, which could cause the loss of their job, and family while also traumatizing them and destroying their trust in the system.
Solidarity and Collective Liberation
In Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon wrote:
“At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.”
Echoing the revolutionary thoughts of Fanon, a communist perspective on the most radical form of therapy would be to revolt. It’s in our history. From our ancestors who fought for independence in Haiti, to our people in Burkina Faso led by our late comrade Thomas Sankara, to the Alliance of the Sahel States in Africa. We must combat capitalism, combat imperialism, combat settler-colonialism, to combat fascism. Liberation through violence is a necessary action. We cannot exist in a world where these structures and their purveyors exist. We cannot ameliorate our material conditions without their elimination. The medicine the people need is a revolution and collective liberation!
It is also vital to highlight how space for mental health support from within our community is necessary leading up to the revolution, during, and after. We have to be there for our comrades. This looks like providing psycho therapy through a pan-African Communist lens that addresses the interconnectedness of global oppression: capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, racism, anti-Blackness, zionism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and the necessity of the liberation of us all physically, materially, emotionally, and spiritually through decolonization and revolution. This can happen over a phone call, facetime, walk in the park, car ride, etc, it can happen anywhere as long as you are meeting people where they are and catering to their needs.
Colonized people everywhere have a common enemy: Kwame Ture notes in his speech at the First Conference of the Organization of Latin American Solidarity, Cuba, July 1967
“Our enemy is white Western imperialist society. Our struggle is to overthrow this system that feeds itself and expands itself through the economic and cultural exploitation of non-white, non-Western peoples—of the Third World.”
Our late Comrade Kwame Ture and many other revolutionaries like him understood how integral solidarity was to the collective liberation of ALL colonized peoples. Colonization, imperialism, and capitalism left no stone unturned. They leave scars on the minds, bodies, and land of indigenous peoples– but our revolutionary spirit remains steadfast. While we may be globally dispersed, our trauma is connected by the story of global oppression. We must rise in solidarity with each other. We must support decolonial struggles wholeheartedly. We must decolonize our minds from the web of lies fed to us by white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism. Together we can smash the white supremacist, capitalist-imperialist hegemonic entities. Revolutionary optimism is what drives the collective to fight for a better world. A better world for us all is possible, but it does not happen by staying idle– take action, decolonize your mind, read theory, and join a revolutionary organization.
Sources and Recommended Books
- American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.).
- Cohen, B. M. Z. (2016). Psychiatric hegemony: A Marxist theory of mental illness.
- Metzl, J. M. (2014). The protest psychosis: How schizophrenia became a black disease.