In 1851, a southern physician named Samuel A. Cartwright concluded that many black slaves suffered from a mental condition which he called drapetomania. Those slaves afflicted by this malady had the desire to run away from their masters. Cartwright even prescribed whipping slaves as a “preventative measure.”
In the 1960s, some black men who were sent to mental hospitals for evaluation were disproportionately classified as schizophrenic. Why? Because they were involved in civil rights protests — which were said to make them fall victim to schizophrenia.
In the aftermath of World War II, doctors believed that fascist political beliefs were mentally disordered. There was even something call the “F scale,” which purported to test whether someone has fascist beliefs that need to be corrected.
Those are all ugly parts of the past for medical research and psychiatry, but we live in a more enlightened time when none of that could ever happen. Right? Well, maybe not.
Kathleen Taylor is an Oxford University researcher specializing in neuroscience. She suggested last week that religious fundamentalism might be treated as a mental illness soon.
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