I just began to get into the book and I was immediately reminded of a lesson of a class I took years ago.

We read this article (hopefully the link works)

http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~thompsoc/Body.html

I find the idea of cultural relativity an how it relates to mental illness very interesting. I recalled this article when reading the introduction and the Dobuans were mentioned. My favorite thing about the article i linked here is that it makes you think how strange those Naciremas are, until you realize who this "odd" tribe really is.

Hi everyone. I agree with Sam, I thought Metzl did really creative work writing this book - it was really refreshing and made the book really compelling. However, sometimes I think it also took away from his argument. He spent so much time talking about the woman at the beginning at the book that he almost loses the reader - it's still interesting, but it sort of made me confused about his argument. Once he tied it together, I understood, but it was an odd choice. I was also interesting in something that I saw as perhaps a hole in his argument. While I find his argument compelling, I noticed that he did not directly address the 'sexual psychopath' fear that was an its height in the 40s and 50s, perhaps into the 60s. I'm not by any means an expert in this topic area or era, but I know that George Chauncey points to a moral panic in this time period that revolved around psychologists and the creation of 'sexual psychopaths,' and that this lead to many people seen as 'deviants' were pathologized. How much of this fear was perhaps responsible for the shift from white housewives to African American men? Overall, I was fascinated by Metzl's argument and his use of evidence. I particularly enjoyed his use of material like movies, ads, and other visual sources. I found the pharmaceutical ads totally shocking.

Protest Psychosis

I found this book to be a fascinating and engaging read. Metzl did a great job interweaving archival sources, interviews and a historical timeline for schizophrenia. I particularly liked the way he wrote the book in such an engaging way that allowed the reader to absorb these complex ideas and want to continue reading.

I have always found histories of institutions to be interesting (probably stemming from too many ghost stories as a child). In a middle school english class we read "The Yellow Wallpaper", a short story about a woman who goes insane upon being confined to bedrest, and whenever this topic pops up in a class I am reminded of this story.

I thought that Metzl's focus on the changing definition and association of schizophrenia through the 20th century was very interesting. Extending his study to the wider context to such events as the Civil Rights movement was very educating for me because I had not been previously so well exposed to the history of schizophrenia.

Interesting read...

I think that Metzl's narrative, Protest Psychosis, was a more interesting read than the previous book...however I do not know if it is simply due to my own personal interests in terms of how history is written.

The eloquent prose of the case studies provides an insight into the institution but, more importantly, insight into the lives of a few patients. Metzl uses patient files, as well as documented interviews between patient/doctor to give the narrative a more personal theme. Writing patients back into the history of medicine is often something, until recently, which history has overlooked. However, providing a more personal touch, a reader is allowed to make a different judgment of a particular situation and how it changes over time. For example the first case deals with a woman placed in the institution for (basically) breaking down in a public place due to overwhelming stress in her life. However, without the creation of story within Metzl's narrative, we might not much of a story, or at least not one as compelling.

I enjoyed reading about schizophrenia's changing perspectives - the general public, those institutionalized, and those in power-positions within and without the institutions. Moreover, I feel like Protest Psychosis provides an interesting example of how a social history of medicine can be written.

The Protest Psychosis

The Protest Psychosis provides a rather in-depth look at the way schizophrenia has developed since it's development and how the disease reinforced racial stereotypes, especially in the 1960's and 1970's. Metzl takes an honest approach in his narrative and I appreciate that. His comprehensive and lengthy research could in no way be represented or reiterated in one book and he readily admits this. I liked his approach of citing specific case files, namely patients, to tell the story of how this disease changed over time and it's ramifications on society. Personally, I was very interested in the connection Metzl makes between the architecture of the institution and the activities that took place within. The fact that a hospital could easily transition and function as a prison, the way Ionia State Hospital morphed into Riverside Correctional Facility, is troubling. This aspect of the story alone provides insight as to what life was like for patients at the hospital. I would be interested in seeing additional photographs of the institution besides those included in the text.

Dying in the City?

Hi, all. I agree with Lauren's earlier post about the parallels to other stories we've read in this class: in many ways, the story of African Americans and sickle cell anemia reflects many of the same issues as we encountered in our discussion of Filipinos. I think that these types of stories (that tie together public health/disease/hygiene/marginalized community) are great test cases for showing the very complicated way that disease works in America. As we see in Dying in the City of the Blues, the 'story' of sickle cell anemia is about much, much more than an illness. We can see the ways that this disease provided a center for the already existing discourses of race, gender, class, and region. At a certain point, though, it seems that a discussion that is based on sickness or disease should deal perhaps more with the actual disease. As one reviewer that I read pointed out, the book is called "Dying in the City of the Blues," but the book is more about living with or dealing with or talking about disease than it was about dying. Additionally, the book is more about the discourse surrounding sickle cell anemia than it really is about the experience of the disease. However, I appreciated the diversity of sources - particularly his interesting addition of blues lyrics - and I felt that they really helped to give a feeling of the pervasiveness of the issue of sickle cell.

FROM BRIENNE

Like another student, I too discovered that chapter six provided much food for thought. We see in it how politics, race, and disease interacted, sometimes in unscrupulous ways, in national and local politics. Overall, this book is interesting and enjoyable to read. However, I take issue with a couple of minor subjects in chapter six.

The last paragraph on page 183 oversimplifies and idealizes the controversy surrounding the disease, claiming that even conservatives could appreciate its implications for reducing drug abuse in patients. This paragraph seems to go against the grain of the book, which says that the disease caused disputes even among members within a constituency. I question how much the idea of funding the disease really appealed to conservatives, especially when one of the main arguments that was used to appeal to them was that funding research on the disease could help reduce drug addiction in the small number of patients directly suffering with the disease. In the same vein, today I could say that government funding for alternative energy research would appeal to Republican Congress members because it could help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and also help provide more jobs to the economy, but ultimately when such a bill came up for voting, it would probably be accepted by many Democrats and few Republicans, because those issues I just mentioned pale in comparison, at least in the minds of most people, to the issue of protecting the environment, which is more heavily advocated by Democrats. In other words, almost any issue can be made to look like it will appeal to people with diverse political views, but in practice it only appeals to a certain segment of people.

Wailoo also seemed to dismiss too readily the problem of Italian and Greeks saying that Cooley’s anemia should be given the same deference by political leaders as sickle cell anemia (p. 194). The books contains only one paragraph on the subject, and essentially dismisses it as “me too politics,” instead of giving the issue due regard.