Manic Available to Purchase
-
Published:June 2024
Through ethnographic and historical research, the chapter examines two questionable precedents given for excited delirium syndrome. First, the author examines “Bell's mania,” a diagnosis developed during the Mexican American War by psychiatrist Luther Bell, who drugged and experimented on patients in custody who died after these treatments. Wetli used Bell's mania to claim that “spontaneous” deaths do, in fact, occur in custody. Second, the author explores Wetli's citation of “lynching media” to justify excited delirium syndrome. Racist media claimed that Black people have “superhuman” strength and are impervious to pain when intoxicated with cocaine and then spontaneously die around police. Demonstrating how flawed diagnostic criteria and racial biases are embedded in Wetli's research, the chapter presents a compelling case for the need to dismantle biased medical frameworks. Further, it reveals how the diagnosis of “mania” has historically been deployed to criminalize people who did not conform to White Western patriarchal norms.
Advertisement