Book Review

摘要

Dennis Doyle’s is a fascinating book about a small but influential cadre of New York health crusaders who fought to bring Harlem residents access to psychiatric care. Comprised of juvenile court justices, educators, civil rights activists and mental health professionals, this group challenged the mainstream medical belief that black Americans were immune to psychological trauma. They embraced a colour-blind model of psychiatric health that garnered the support of city officials and community leaders, enabling them to incorporate ground-breaking mental health programmes into Harlem’s juvenile justice system, public schools, social services and medical institutions. But while their efforts led to innovative and effective therapeutic interventions, their colour-blind approach failed to account for the larger structural mechanisms at work in America’s system of racial exclusion. Inadvertently, these well-intentioned reformers re-inscribed onto Harlem residents many of the same problematic narratives about black health and psychology that they intended to dismantle. Doyle’s work explores this intrinsic paradox of colour-blind liberalism in psychiatric healthcare reform and offers compelling insights into the relationship between the construct of race, psychological universalism and what it means to be human.