According to a page on the web site of the British NHSDirect - an officially sanctioned
medical help-line - one definition of 'Psychosis' is now "to have beliefs not found in the
culture one was brought up in". This is a response to statistics that showed that young
men from West Indian and African backgrounds in London were four times more likely
to be diagnosed as psychotic than young white men of the same age. Thus we have a
situation in which if a white indigenous British person adopts the "magical" beliefs of
Africans and West Indians they are to be deemed "psychotic" - and are liable to
compulsory treatment.
Whilst the "magical beliefs" of West Indians are, to a considerable extent, similar to
those still found amongst the indigenous British, the beliefs of West Africans can be
"rather extreme".
A white British person would be in real trouble if they told their psychiatrist/doctor they
believed in what at lot of West Africans believe in.
So - there is an "illness" us white people can get - to be "afflicted" by psychotic beliefs
derived from other cultures - which - are NOT to be accounted psychotic in people from
those cultures.
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