The state of psychiatry in South Africa today

John Dommisse

Social Science & Medicine, 1987, vol. 24, issue 9, 749-757

Abstract: The very idea/philosophy behind the South African government's policy of Apartheid (separation), is insulting and humiliating to the black people and tends to incite arrogance and a sense of superiority, even omnipotence, in the whites. Personality development is skewed along racial lines. The mental effects of malnutrition and certain physical diseases, both of which are widespread in South African blacks, especially among their children, are well known. The torture to which security-police detainees have been subjected has resulted in thousands of cases of mental ill-health, as well as physical ill-health, and about 100 deaths, in the past 30 years. Authoritative reports about the in-patient psychiatric facilities for blacks have shocked the world medical, psychiatric and lay communities, and out-patient services for blacks are only sparsely existent, especially in the rural areas (the so-called 'independent homelands' and 'self-governing national states'). The socio-political climate makes interracial therapy, necessary because of the paucity of trained black professionals, particularly difficult. This fact, and the psychological implications of Apartheid, have, until very recently, hardly ever been addressed by psychiatrists and psychologists practising in South Africa. The United Nations and its agency, the World Health Organization, have taken unequivocally oppositional stands for decades but the (West-oriented) World Medical Association and the (mostly-Western) World Psychiatric Association have yet to speak out on this issue, like they have on those involving the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries.

Keywords: mental; health; South; Africa; Apartheid; (policy); racism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1987
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