Presenter(s): Anne Peters − International Studies
Faculty Mentor(s): Kristin Yarris, Melissa Graboyes
Oral Session 4M
Research Area: Humanities
Franz Fanon has shown how ideas of mental health and illness reflect historical and political constructs, especially for racialized and colonial subjects and their subjugators. “Confronted with a world configured by the colonizer, the colonized subject is always presumed guilty.” (Fanon, 1961). Drawing on Fanon and other post-colonial scholars, my research asks
the question: what influence did colonial ideas about race and mental illness have on mental health care practices in East Africa during British colonialism? I explore this question by examining primary source materials from archives of the British Superintendent-directed “lunatic asylum” in Zanzibar, Tanzania, from 1914 to 1947. In particular, I conducted a close reading and analysis of the diagnostic labels used during this time, how they were variously applied to African patients (colonial subjects) as compared to patients in British mental hospitals in the same period. My research reveals the colonial motives of the British Protectorate in both the diagnosis and the treatment of patients, and considers the broader political purpose these diagnoses may have served. Not only were the staff in charge inadequate to make such diagnoses, but also it was a commonly held belief that the native populations admitted to the asylum were mentally incapable of having the same diagnoses as their English counterpart. My research also contributes an historical perspective to the broader field of Global Mental Health, as I examine how shifts in psychiatric diagnoses reflect social interests, political power, and racialized ideas.