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Schizophrenia absolutely can induce racism in some people. Schizophrenia (and other related disorders) can induce in some people obsessive socially unacceptabl
by skissane 3y ago
Schizophrenia absolutely can induce racism in some people.
Schizophrenia (and other related disorders) can induce in some people obsessive socially unacceptable thoughts, which can include racist thoughts. It doesn't happen to everyone with schizophrenia – there are plenty of people with schizophrenia who aren't racist. And even if a person with schizophrenia is racist, it isn't necessarily due to their schizophrenia – they could well be racist for the same reasons many people without schizophrenia are racist. But that said, there absolutely are some people who aren't racist, and then they have a psychotic episode, and as a result of that psychotic episode they develop racist delusions/obsessions.
This can take the form of persecutory delusions, but not always. Schizophrenic delusions can take make many forms other than just persecutory, so in some people schizophrenia can induce non-persecutory racist delusions.
- johnisgood 3y agocan, just like many things. As for socially unacceptable thoughts, yeah what yesterday was acceptable is today unacceptable. :)
- skissane 3y agoMore to the point, in Terry's case, we don't know. It is possible, that without schizophrenia, he would never have been racist. (At least if we define "racism" in terms of explicit statements/actions, as opposed to unconscious biases.) It is possible that he always was racist, and would have been even without schizophrenia, but schizophrenia took away his ability to hide it from others, or made him not care about doing that. Nobody can really know.
- squigz 3y ago> what yesterday was acceptable is today unacceptable. This is how society works to make progress, yes.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]