Eddie G. Griffin (BASG) asked me in an e-mail, "Has America gone mad in race obsessions?"
The simple answer to this question is, "Yes." That's why I think it's important that extreme color-aroused emotions, ideation and behavior disorder (ECEIBD) be studied, diagnosed and treated by members of the American Psychiatric Association. While "race" is a biological construct for which there is no biological evidence but much scientific inquiry, the mental disorder of Extreme Color-aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior Disorder (ECEIBD) is a psychiatric disorder for which the evidence is everywhere apparent, but there is little effort by those who diagnose and treat psychiatric disorders to study, diagnose, treat or otherwise do anything about it.
Carl C. Bell, M.D., a Black psychiatrist, is a member of the American Psychiatric Association who has spent over thirty years working to convince the APA to recognize, study, diagnose and treat what he calls "pathological bias." But the APA has a bias of its own, that holds that conditions that are generalized throughout society cannot be deemed "abnormal" and therefor should not be diagnosed and treated.
In the field of medicine for the physical body, any condition that prevents the body from functioning properly can be considered a disease, even if it is a condition that is normal in the sense that many people suffer from it in certain places, like malnutrition. Psychiatry, on the other hand, believes that conditions that prevent the proper functioning of human beings are NOT psychiatric disorders if they are so widespread as to be normal. So, while malnutrition and its biological effects will be treated by doctors even if everyone in the whole world suffers from the condition, "pathological bias" or "CEIBD" will NOT be treated for so long as it appears to be so generalized as to be "normal."
If medical doctors took the same approach to malnutrition, they would refuse to treat malnutrition in countries where the condition was generalized, because malnutrition and its physical effects on the body and mind would be too "normal" to be considered a to be disease.
Psychiatry also has been reluctant thus far to "list" ECEIBD as a recognized psychiatric disorder because they can find no genetic marker for the disease that would prove that the disease exists and help to distinguish those who are ill with ECEIBD from those who are not. Again, if medical doctors applied the same definitional criteria to the illness of malnutrition, medical doctors would conclude that since there was no genetic marker for malnutrition, there was also no reliable way to distinguish those who have the condition from those who do not.
Of course, we know that people who are not born malnourished and have no physical pre-dispositions can nonetheless develop this life-threatening illness as the result of the effects that their social and economic circumstances have on their food diet. Even with no predispositions at all environmental conditions can and do cause life-threatening condition that medicine would be crazy not to treat.
Similarly, ECEIBD may have no genetic markers or physically predisposing factors, and yet the patterns of extreme emotion, ideation and behavior regularly lead to severe impairment of sufferers in one or more life functions, even though the causes may be entirely environmental, as with malnutrition.
Clearly the need to diagnose and treat the condition is no less less in ECEIBD than in malnutrition, where the symptoms and course of the disease are such that medical consultation, diagnosis and treatment is often appropriate and never denied for definitional reasons.
Because psychiatry starts with this definitional bias, is important that we abandon the term "racism" and every other term that makes no distinction between extreme cases of a normal disease and normal cases of this normal disease. Psychiatry should focus on the study, diagnosis and treatment of extreme cases of color-aroused emotion, ideation and behavior disorder. This engagement in the reality of this most intractible but also most important of human psychiatric disorders, historically, economically and socially, will eventually shed light even on the more "normal" cases.
More than any other disease process, the study, diagnosis and treatment of Extreme Color-aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior Disorder (ECEIBD) offers the prospect of major steps ahead for peace and integration within the society of humankind, here and elsewhere in the world.
The alternative is for psychiatry to stand by and say that CEIBD is "normal" in the United States like malnutrition is "normal" in some parts developing countries, drawing from this observation the unwarranted conclusion, made only in psychiatry, that conditions that are "normal" are not diseases, no matter how much damage they cause to the individual and society. It makes no sense for psychiatry to sit by idly while a condition that ravages the minds, attiudes and behaviors of our society - every day of the week - goes unstudied, undiagnosed and untreated.
It will be easier for psychiatry to focus on the CEIBD condition, and complete the definitional process, when they focus their attention on studying, diagnosing and treating those cases that are most clearly "extreme," which is where medicine always starts to resolve illnesses that are widespread, precisely because the extreme cases are where the damage done is most clearly identified, studied and clinical conclusions drawn.
May 11, 2007
"Has America gone "mad" in "race" obsessions?"
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11 comments:
Interesting perspective. The Bell Curve of Normalcy is off-center. Besides the undiagnosis psychological disorder of African-Americans on the "sane" side of the fence, there is a general state of mass psychosis that will allow a man to look himself in the mirror and go his way and forget what manner of man he is.
I'm skeptical that being a jerk or having opinions that others don't like is really mental illness, but if that doctor can prove it, more power to him.
A lot of people minimize the seriousness of ECEIBD, thinking that it is just "being a jerk." But, we have to remember that sometimes these "jerks" drag black men behind pickup trucks and hang them from trees while cutting their penises off. By definition, that goes beyond being a "jerk" to something much more serious.
In fact, by applying the word "jerk" to that, you show your own intellectual resistance to acknowledging the sereverity of a mental condition that would lead someone to cut another person's penis off simply after perceiving the skin color of that person and reacting EXTREMELY emotionally, ideationally and behaviorally to the mere visual cue of skin color.
You might also minimize manic depression by saying that we don't want to call mere "irresponsible and impulsive behavior," a psychiatric problem. But, because 15% of manics eventually commit suicide that seriousness of the illness for the individual and society FORCE us to acknowledge that the symptoms are part of a more serious mental disease.
Agoraphobia could be described as "mere timidity," yet it is listed as a mental disorder in the DSM precisely because when it is extreme agoraphobia can prevent a person from working, making friends, shopping and, in general, living.
If agoraphobia is sufficiently serious to be treated as a psychiatric disease, even though it never causes anyone to discriminate against others, hang them or enslave them, shouldn't we be willing to consider the much more serious consequences of ECEIBD worth at least as much psychiatric attention as agoraphobia?
Likewise, anorexia - failing to eat in the belief that food is bad because one is already fat - is treated by psychiatrists who recognize that anorexia can lead to death of the sufferer if untreated. How much more urgent is it that psychiatrists treat the illness of those who scream epithets in the street at people they don't know based on skin color, often followed by fights, maiming and murder.
Doesn't that go beyond "being a jerk" and isn't it time we recognized the seriousness of this behavior and the thoughts and ideation that lead to the behavior.
All the things you mentioned that can happen to black people are terrible and should be aggressively dealt with, of course. I just wonder about it being technically a disease because it seems to be a learned behavior, whereas mental illness usually comes from within.
Racists teach their children to think that way, that it is acceptable and even desirable behavior. Some people become racist after one or several bad experiences after which they over-generalize about the other group.
I believe racism can be prevented or untaught through education, unlike mental illness.
Yes racism is a big problem, but I find it hard to believe it can be cured with a pill, or could be effectively dealt with using the same techniques used for known mental illnesses. In short, I wonder if that doctor is barking up the wrong tree. But like I said, if he is right and can prove it, then more power to him. If racism can be cured by a psychiatrist/therapist, that would be wonderful. Then they could work on curing misogyny too.
Does agoraphobia "come from within" or is it the result of interaction with our environment? Do anorexia and bulimia "come from within" or are they the result of interaction with our environment. If you conclude that we are not born with anorexia, bulimia and agoraphobia and that they DON'T "come from within" does that mean that we should stop treating these conditions as mental disorders?
Arachnophobia obviously doesn't "come entirely from within" because it depends upon the existence of spiders for arouse it, and spiders don't come from within. They are part of our environment.
In the same way, an irrational and exaggerated and, in some cases, extreme and debilitating response to skin-color is aroused by something outside of us (seeing the skin color of another person), just like presence of elevators outside of us arouses claustrophobia and the presents of heights arouses (that phobia). All of these illnesses that are aroused by exterior stimuli and that are the product of environment (or cannot exist or be defined or diagnosed in the absence of environmental cues) are listed as mental disorders in the DSM. If you conclude that these should be listed white ECEIBD should not, you'll logically need to give a different reason than they one you've given. There are many examples of recognized mental disorders that only arise in the presence of certain outside stimuli.
@Anne: Obviously, if what we call racism doesn't reside in the mind first, it cannot reside anywhere else. In our society, serious problems that start in the mind are the province of psychiatrists. This is so much an established part of our legal culture that it is literally impossible in most cases to offer evidence about a mental disability or state of mind in court without having a psychiatrist testify about that, because psychiatrists are considered to offer the "best evidence" about what goes on in the mind and the courts will accept on the best evidence in cases where expertise is required.
How, then, can we expect to make any progress at all on this disease that clearly happens in the mind if we are unwilling to study it as precisely a mental phenomenon. Once we admit that it IS a mental phenomenon, then in our society it HAS to be studied by psychiatrists because no one else is most competent to study and perhaps treat it. For example, it is not hard to imagine that (or research) people whose behavior toward people of a different color makes it impossible for them to find and keep work, because they incorrigibly start fights for no other reason than that they are aroused by the skin color of another person. If that behavior was due to paranoia, the person could be considered disabled. Are they any less disabled if the behavior is due to their overwhelming emotions that arise when dealing with other people, because of color?
If a man says he want to kill his Black co-workers, shouldn't he be evaluated. If not by a psychiatrist then by whom? A plumber or a sociologist? Can a sociologist prescribed the medications that might help such a person to resist the temptation to kill his co-workers? Of course not!
Instead of looking at reason why we shouldn't consider ECEIBD a disease, we need to evaluate it in the very same way that we have evaluated other conditions that exist in the head: Are there problematic emotions, thoughts and resulting behavior? What causes these? Can therapy help people to reevaluate their beliefs, change their feelings and behaviors and make their lives better?
We won't know the answers unless we try, will we. If we said, AIDS is not a medical problem because I doubt doctors will ever be able to cure AIDS, that would be like saying ECEIBD is not a mental problem because I doubt psychiatrists will ever be able to cure ECEIBD.
The stimuli for other fears don't come from within, but the fear itself does. When I was a child I was very much afraid of spiders. Nobody told me to be; I just was. Nobody tells people to be afraid of elevators or crowds. But some people train their children to be racist, when those children probably would not have been that way if they had been raised in better families. Some old preachers even used to twist the message of the Bible to try to make slavery sound like a good thing. That is taught, sociological behavior.
By the way, Jews, who can come in any color, are also victims of prejudice from the same people who hate blacks. That makes me think it's not exactly color-based in the way that doctor says.
You do make some very good points though. It surely must be worth looking into. Paranoia, fear, anger and homicidal ideation should be, and already are, treatable by therapists or psychiatrists. It would be great if the doctor is right and his discovery helps the world. Worth looking into.
Anne, for just the reason you mention, Dr. Bell prefers the term "pathological bias" which includes irrational bias against others based on sexual orientation, gender, religion . . .
I prefer the more specific definition I have offered because science seems to be more successful when it seeks to precisely define things, even when that requires more work and more focus. A fear of spiders might be broadly the same thing as a fear of elevators (fear), and yet successful treatment requires a very particular focus on what arouses the fear and the particular circumstances in which the fear arises. So, conflating fear of gays with fear of Jews and spiders might mean that no one gets successful and specific diagnosis and treatment for what really ails them.
It's certainly true that the constituent symptoms of ECEIBD like paranoia, delusions and obsessive thinking are already treated by psychiatrists. However, if a worker goes to a psychiatrists office now and expresses a deep and life-long hatred of Blacks and a wish to see them die, AND says that he has a gun, the psychiatrist may well not see that as abnormal. After all, if hating Black people and wanting to see them dead, even when they are strangers, was an emotional illness then certainly it would have been added to the DSM after all these years, right?
Because this group of symptoms is not listed together as an illness in the DSM, many intake interviews will completely fail to inquire and miss symptoms that a worker's stress and anger results from his ECEIBD. Even if it shown to result from ECEIBD, treatment may not be covered because extreme and longstanding hatred for strangers based on their color is not considered to be a "mental condition." If you work alongside that person as his behavior becomes increasingly bizarre and belligerent, and you know he owns one or more guns, you might well wish that psychiatrists would recognize and treat the illness of generalized color-aroused hatred. Intervention by a knowledgeable psychiatrist just might save your life.
I would hope that a psychiatrist would see a problem with someone wanting to kill others and treat it, since the name of the diagnosis is largely for billing purposes and in reality doesn't tell the whole story. Psychiatrists can actually get a bit creative in labeling problems just to get them to fit into some category on the paperwork. If ECEIBD can be proven, become billable, and can be better treated that way, it would be great.
You and I may not always agree on the details, but it's clear to me that we both want to improve the world.
The problem is, Anne, I would be willing to bet that most psychiatrist NEVER discuss issues of color with their patients, and if the patients expressed color-aroused antipathies then the psychiatrists view this as normal. So, even if a client's anger is centered around skin-color aroused thoughts and feelings, most psychiatrists won't pick up on that because they are not trained to do so.
America needs treatment programs for people whose color-aroused issues lands them in prison and that's not going to happen until psychiatry recognizes that this is happening and decides to do something about it.
"Hate" as in "hate crimes" is an emotional problem. Where's the APA's response to this emotional problem, huh? If the US Congress and the states are working on and debating solutions to hate, then surely the profession that deals with emotions should be working on this with them.
But this is a sufficiently large problem that the response needs to be programmatic and systematic within the psychiatric profession. A million people each year are the subject of hate crime complaints and discrimination complaints, with many more victims and perpetrators at large out there. Doesn't psychiatry have ANYTHING to say about this as a profession?
It's true what you say. I've read a fair amount about psychology over the years, and was an office clerk for a large psychiatrist's office for two years. In all that time, I don't recall ever hearing the issue of race/color addressed by psychiatrists or therapists in any way, other than in the blogosphere, or in reference to ignorant old racist notions of the past.
It seems to me that psychiatry is color blind. It assumes that everyone's mind follows the same general rules. That may be so on one level, but the danger is as you say, they may not be recognizing some problems. By being color blind, psychiatrists fail to understand that many of their clients are NOT color blind, or ARE affected by color in one way or another.
I believe color blindness as an ultimate societal goal is a good thing, but at this time we can't afford to be completely color blind. That would cause us to ignore problems that we could be working on.
I was very skeptical at first that this studying of ECEIBD would lead to anything, but you seem to have convinced me that it may have some merits.
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