Black Skin, White Coats: Nigerian Psychiatrists, Decolonization, and the Globalization of Psychiatry

ISBN-10: 0821444735
ISBN-13: 9780821444733
Category: Medical
Pages: 288
Language: English
Published: 2013-10-15
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Author: Matthew M. Heaton

Description

Black Skin, White Coats is a history of psychiatry in Nigeria from the 1950s to the 1980s. Working in the contexts of decolonization and anticolonial nationalism, Nigerian psychiatrists sought to replace racist colonial psychiatric theories about the psychological inferiority of Africans with a universal and egalitarian model focusing on broad psychological similarities across cultural and racial boundaries. Particular emphasis is placed on Dr. T. Adeoye Lambo, the first indigenous Nigerian to earn a specialty degree in psychiatry in the United Kingdom in 1954. Lambo returned to Nigeria to become the medical superintendent of the newly founded Aro Mental Hospital in Abeokuta, Nigeria’s first “modern” mental hospital. At Aro, Lambo began to revolutionize psychiatric research and clinical practice in Nigeria, working to integrate “modern” western medical theory and technologies with “traditional” cultural understandings of mental illness. Lambo’s research focused on deracializing psychiatric thinking and redefining mental illness in terms of a model of universal human similarities that crossed racial and cultural divides. Black Skin, White Coats is the first work to focus primarily on black Africans as producers of psychiatric knowledge and as definers of mental illness in their own right. By examining the ways that Nigerian psychiatrists worked to integrate their psychiatric training with their indigenous backgrounds and cultural and civic nationalisms, Black Skin, White Coats provides a foil to Frantz Fanon’s widely publicized reactionary articulations of the relationship between colonialism and psychiatry. Black Skin, White Coats is also on the cutting edge of histories of psychiatry that are increasingly drawing connections between local and national developments in late-colonial and postcolonial settings and international scientific networks. Heaton argues that Nigerian psychiatrists were intimately aware of the need to engage in international discourses as part and parcel of the transformation of psychiatry at home.

Get the book

Similar books

How Institutions are Shaping the Future of Our Children: For Better or for Worse?
By Catherine Dulmus, Karen Sowers
Lammert, M., & Timberlake, E. M. (1986). Termination of foster care for the older adolescent: Issues of emancipation and individuation.
Reversibility of Chronic Disease and Hypersensitivity, Volume 5: Treatment Options of Chemical Sensitivity
By William J. Rea, Kalpana D. Patel
Dou, L., E. Bertrand, C. Cerini, V. Faure, J. Sampol, R. Vanholder, Y. Berland, P. Brunet. ... A. Timberlake, B. Sumpio, R. Pfragner, I. M. Modlin, M. Kidd.
Rockwood and Green's Fractures in Adults
By William Ricci, Charles M. Court-Brown, Margaret M. McQueen
Chendrasekhar A, Moorman DW, Timberlake GA. An evaluation of the effects of ... Chittiboina P, Wylen E, Ogden A, et al. Traumatic spondylolisthesis of the ...
Breast Pathology, An Issue of Surgical Pathology Clinics
By Laura C. Collins
Hartmann LC, Radisky DC, Frost MH, et al. Understanding the premalignant potential of ... D'Alfonso TM, Wang K, Chiu YL, et al. Pathologic upgrade rates on ...
Telepractice in Speech-Language Pathology
By K. Todd Houston
Stensland, J., Speedie, S., Ideker, M., House, J., & Thompson, T. (1999). The relative cost of outpatient ... Deal, J. L. (1987). Appraisal and diagnosis of ...
Addressing Adversity: Prioritising adversity and trauma-informed care for children and young people in England.
By Marc Bush, Lord Victor Adebowale, Rebecca Adlington
1 2 Howard, S. and Johnson, B. (2000) Resilient and Non-resilient Behaviour in ... 4 De Haan, L., Hawley, D. and Deal, J. (2002) 'Operationalizing family ...
Culture, Brain, and Analgesia: Understanding and Managing Pain in Diverse Populations
By Mario Incayawar, Knox H. Todd
... are not fluent in the language/s of the medical care provider.72 Research ... Anglo-Americans have traditionally placed a great deal of emphasis on the ...
Image-Guided Spine Interventions
By John M. Mathis
This practical guide thoroughly discusses both well-established and new interventions that are applied to the spine for the purpose of pain relief.
New Mynursinglab -- Access Card -- For Maternal-Child Nursing (24-Month Access)
By Pearson Education, Pearson Education, Inc., David P Pearson Education
Several versions of Pearson's MyLab & Mastering products exist for each title, including customized versions for individual schools, and registrations are not transferable.
Pearson's Medical Assisting (General)
By Pearson Education Staff, Madan Dr Pearson Education
If a picture paints a thousand words, imagine what video can do? Pearson Medical Assisting Videos help users learn the nuances and the details of many medical assisting procedures.