Cultural and Racial History of Mental Health

Undergraduate

Since the 1960s, social scientists have analyzed how the scientific ideas about mental illness, mental health policies, institutions, healing practices, and popular discourses surrounding mental health have been influenced by the social and cultural contexts. This course introduces students to the debates and questions guiding the history of mental health since the Civil Rights and the Psychiatric Survivor Movements in the 1960s, especially those that relate to Critical Race Theory. Through primary sources and secondary literature, students learn about the intersections between mental illness, race, and ethnicity. The class materials include topics such as disability justice, psychopharmacology, the community mental health movement, and the history of asylums in a comparative perspective. SO W 9:25am-11:20am