Ethnic Group and Compulsory Detention

1988 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parimala Moodley ◽  
Graham Thornicroft

ABSTRACT: One hundred consecutive patients detained under the Mental Health Act (1983) were investigated in terms of ethnicity, socio-demographic characteristics, psychiatric diagnosis, reasons for compulsory detention and immediate management. Of the total group, 26 were of West Indian origin and 65 were white. West Indian patients were more likely to be young, referred by the police, and detained because of violence. Schizophrenia was diagnosed much less frequently among the West Indian male patients.

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Littlewood ◽  
Maurice Lipsedge

SynopsisVarious studies have shown: (i) increased rates of psychoses in immigrants to Britain, and a particularly high rate of schizophrenia in the West Indian- and West African-born; and (ii) a greater proportion of atypical psychoses in immigrants. A retrospective study of psychotic inpatients from a London psychiatric unit demonstrated increased rates of schizophrenia in patients from the Caribbean and West Africa. These patients included a high proportion of those with paranoid and religious phenomenology, those with frequent changes of diagnosis, formal admissions, and married women. The West Indian-born had been in Britain for nearly 10 years before first seeing a psychiatrist and, if they had an illness with religious symptomatology, were likely to have been in hospital for only 3 weeks. Rates of schizophrenia without paranoid phenomenology were similar in each ethnic group. It is suggested that the increase in the diagnosis of schizophrenia in the West Indian- born, and possibly in the West African-born, may be due in part to the occurrence of acute psychotic reactions which are diagnosed as schizophrenia.


Author(s):  
Rajeswari Sambasivam ◽  
Anitha Jeyagurunathan ◽  
Edimansyah Abdin ◽  
Saleha Shafie ◽  
Sherilyn Chang ◽  
...  

Abstract Purpose The physical and mental wellbeing of an individual is impacted by the type occupation one does. This study aims to establish the prevalence of mental and physical disorders, the association of occupational groups and health-related quality of life, and the extent of work-loss and work-cut back in past 30 days among the employed in the Singapore resident population. Methods Data from a population-based, epidemiological survey of a representative sample of Singapore citizens and permanent residents aged 18 years and above were used. Lifetime diagnosis of select mental disorders was established using the World Health Organization’s Composite International Diagnostic Interview version 3.0 (WHO-CIDI 3.0). Data on nicotine dependence, work productivity, quality of life and socio-demographics were obtained via self-report. Ten major occupational groups based on the Singapore Standard Occupational Classification were included in the analysis. Results The sample comprised 4021 employed individuals who were predominantly males (54.7%) and aged 35–49 years (35.4%). ‘Service and sales workers’ (22.6%), ‘Professionals’ (17.3%) and ‘Legislators, senior officials and managers’ (16.4%) were the three largest occupational groups. Socio-demographic characteristics differed significantly (p < 0.001) across all occupational groups. Lifetime prevalence of mood disorders among the employed was 8.4% and the most prevalent physical disorder was chronic pain (18.9%). No significant differences were observed in work productivity loss across the occupational groups. Conclusions The disparities in the socio-demographic characteristics and prevalence of mental and physical disorders across occupational categories provide policymakers with vital information to pilot effective interventions that can improve the psychosocial and physical conditions at work.


2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Sun-Joo Lee

InImperialism at Home, Susan Meyer explores Charlotte Brontë's metaphorical use of race and empire in Jane Eyre. In particular, she is struck by Brontë's repeated allusions to bondage and slavery and wonders, “Why would Brontë write a novel permeated with the imagery of slavery, and suggesting the possibility of a slave uprising, in 1846, after the emancipation of the British slaves had already taken place?” (71). Meyer speculates, “Perhaps the eight years since emancipation provided enough historical distance for Brontë to make a serious and public, although implicit, critique of British slavery and British imperialism in the West Indies” (71). Perhaps. More likely, I would argue, is the possibility that Brontë was thinking not of West Indian slavery, but of American slavery.


2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 418-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie L. Pietruska

This article examines the mutually reinforcing imperatives of government science, capitalism, and American empire through a history of the U.S. Weather Bureau's West Indian weather service at the turn of the twentieth century. The original impetus for expanding American meteorological infrastructure into the Caribbean in 1898 was to protect naval vessels from hurricanes, but what began as a measure of military security became, within a year, an instrument of economic expansion that extracted climatological data and produced agricultural reports for American investors. This article argues that the West Indian weather service was a project of imperial meteorology that sought to impose a rational scientific and bureaucratic order on a region that American officials considered racially and culturally inferior, yet relied on the labor of local observers and Cuban meteorological experts in order to do so. Weather reporting networks are examined as a material and symbolic extension of American technoscientific power into the Caribbean and as a knowledge infrastructure that linked the production of agricultural commodities in Cuba and Puerto Rico to the world of commodity exchange in the United States.


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