Traces of Coloniality in (Under)Diagnosis of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder among African American Males

Historical representations of the black male body in anthropological and sociological narratives affect contemporary understandings and treatment of African American males in biomedical contexts. In particular, recent scholarship in mental health and psychiatry has noted a discrepancy in prevalence rates for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among African American males. This essay will analyze how colonial practices—such as negative representations of black bodies in travel narratives, scientific racism, and Eurocentric frameworks of trauma—continue to underpin mental health services for African American males, thereby affecting diagnosis and provision of services. Tracing colonial footprints marks an important step in decolonizing approaches to psychology, as it exposes the political and cultural agenda embedded in the structural dynamics of the discipline whilst working towards a more transparent agenda aimed at eliminating the ongoing politics of mainstream psychological science. The paper will examine how The Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTM), developed by the British Psychological Society, begins to account for Psychology’s coloniality. The discussion will place particular emphasis on the theorization of “power”, and how the framework’s understanding of subjects as “historically constituted rather than ontologically given," can offer new insights concerning underdiagnosed PTSD among African American’s males. Placing power at the forefront of the conversation may help to transform psychology as praxis capable of establishing a concept of mental health that prioritizes the cultivation and preservation of racialized groups’ mental wellbeing.