The mad are like savages and the savages are mad

This chapter emerges from the uncomfortable question of whether psychiatry (and the disciplines of the psy) can be both a tool of more traditional colonialism and a form of colonialism itself, and explores the continued coloniality of psychiatrisation. The discussion traces the interlacing histories of colonialism and psychiatry and their co-constitutive metaphors of savagery and madness, in order to think through what this means for current forms of global psychiatrisation and for the development of psychopolitical and epistemologically diverse alternatives. A number of critiques of global psychiatrisation draw on its similarities to, or enacting of, colonialism. Critics of global psychiatrisation mobilise colonialism and imperialism in numerous ways. The dominance of evolutionary explanations of colonialism and madness drew comparison between primitivity and psychopathology, comparing &s;psychotic patients&s; with &s;primitive people&s; and framing social and racially coded hierarchies as biological. The launch of The Lancet&s;s second series on global mental health in 2011 outlines the Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) guidelines.

Child and Adolescent Health · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Mental Health Treatment and Access · Philosophy