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(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
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Note: Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.

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Chapter 44. Non-institutional Aspects 981
associated with migration, would seem to be behind the greater indulgence
In alcohol. In New York State the standardized rates were also significantly
greater for Negroes than for whites in the following mental diseases:
psychosis with cerebral arteriosclerosis (ratio: 2.9 to i), dementia praecox
(ratio: 2.0 to i), senile psychoses (ratio: 1.9 to i), manic-depressive psy-
choses (ratio: 1.5 to i).® Dementia praecox and manic-depressive phychoses,
at least, would seem to be due in part to migration and urbanization.^®
According to a preliminary report of a study in progress, by Mandel
Sherman and Irene C. Sherman, the specific symptoms of mental disease
also are related to social background.®® Delusions of psychotic Negroes tend
to center around the topics of religion, possession of great wealth (often
used to help other Negroes), attainment of superiority in the literary and
educational fields, and outstanding assistance to the race. Delusions of
whites, on the other hand, center around possession of great wealth (usually
for personal benefit only) and somatic reactions (for example, false belief
that one has a serious physical illness). In this connection it is interesting to
note that Negroes have much less paranoia (the “disease of egotism”)
than do whites. Another significant trait of the delusions is that those of
Negro men and women are much less divergent than are those of white
men and women. Negroes are also reported to have more hallucinations
(errors in perception) than do whites, probably because they are less well
educated and more superstitious.
This presentation of a few selected facts regarding the distribution and
differential character of mental disease is a sketchy reflection of a whole
trend in psychiatric research. Experts are far from unanimous regarding the
causation of mental disease or of the specific forms which it takes, but there
is a growing feeling among them that the tensions and crises of life, as
well as more objective social conditions, such as the presence of syphilis and
the excessive use of hard liquor, are directly connected with mental disease.
Negroes and whites lead different sorts of lives, to a certain extent and on
the average, and this may be expected to reflect itself in differentials in
the incidence of mental disease and of its specific manifestations. The
average lower class Negro has, on the one hand, a more carefree life and
fewer inhibitions, as so little is expected of him by the whites, by other
Negroes, and by his own conscience. On the other hand, he meets the most
severe frustrations along the caste line. The situation is different in different
social classes: upper and middle class Negroes may feel the latter frustra-
tions more intensively at the same time as they are not allowed the com-
* Institutionalization is an even poorer index of feeble-mindedness than it is of mental
disease. The rate of first admissions is much higher for whites than for Negroes in the
country as a whole, but this is clearly due to discrimination against Negroes in the South.
In New York and New Jersey, where there is something like impartiality in institutional
policy, Negroes have a higher rate than do whites,

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