In Under the Strain of Color; Gabriel N. Mendes recaptures the history of a largely forgotten New York City institution that embodied new ways of thinking about mental health; race; and the substance of citizenship. Harlem's Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic was founded in 1946 as both a practical response to the need for low-cost psychotherapy and counseling for black residents (many of whom were recent migrants to the city) and a model for nationwide efforts to address racial disparities in the provision of mental health care in the United States.The result of a collaboration among the psychiatrist and social critic Dr. Fredric Wertham; the writer Richard Wright; and the clergyman Rev. Shelton Hale Bishop; the clinic emerged in the context of a widespread American concern with the mental health of its citizens. It proved to be more radical than any other contemporary therapeutic institution; however; by incorporating the psychosocial significance of antiblack racism and class oppression into its approach to diagnosis and therapy.Mendes shows the Lafargue Clinic to have been simultaneously a scientific and political gambit; challenging both a racist mental health care system and supposedly color-blind psychiatrists who failed to consider the consequences of oppression in their assessment and treatment of African American patients. Employing the methods of oral history; archival research; textual analysis; and critical race philosophy; Under the Strain of Color contributes to a growing body of scholarship that highlights the interlocking relationships among biomedicine; institutional racism; structural violence; and community health activism.
#7486812 in Books 1991-07-01Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.50 x 6.50 x 1.25l; .0 #File Name: 080142433X335 pages
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