Chapter 2: How Representations of Race Inform Pathways to Care and Psychiatric Diagnoses

Stereotypes of Black people, especially of Black men, as hostile, aggressive, dangerous, violent, and needing to be controlled inform their pathways to care and the kinds of psychiatric diagnoses that get applied to them. In this chapter, I unpack how race, gender and other social factors continue to inform pathways to care for Black people. Persistent myths and stereotypes of Black people as aggressive and violent often result in pathways to care that subject Black people to controlling and coercive actions and treatments (Anderson et al., 2014; Copeland, 1982; Jarvis et al., 2005). I also take up Fernando’s (1991) concept of ‘the racialization of psychiatric diagnosis’ by examining how the social construction of Black people shapes how diagnoses are applied to them. For example, in discussing the concept of the racialisation of psychiatric diagnosis, I observe that societal stereotypes of Black women as nurturing, strong, self-sufficient, assertive, resilient, and invulnerable ‘superwomen’ and of Black men as stoic, hypermasculine, aggressive, and violent influence the care that they receive, as well as how psychiatric diagnoses are applied to them. These stereotypes have long informed the controlling treatment they experience in their pathways to care on their way to and within psychiatric institutions, which I will turn to in the following section.