Global Health

In 1961, Martinique-born Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) published The Wretched of the Earth. In this, he provided an account, from psychiatric and psychological perspectives, of the dehumanising effects of colonisation upon people and nations.1 An active supporter of the Algerian war of Independence (1954–1962), Fanon asserted that French colonisation had caused a serious decline in Algerian mental health and highlighted how colonists had used particular forms of language and vocabulary to help establish imperialist and native identities (e.g. coloniser, colonised). Fanon worked in a colonial hospital in Algeria, an experience which radicalised him and catalysed one of the most searching critiques of the late-colonial social order. For Fanon, to be colonised was to be alienated from oneself and ones environment, in just the same way as a person suffering from psychiatric illness could be considered alienated from his or herself. In his account, colonialism itself was pathological. Colonialism was synonymous with violence and racism and inflicted profound psychic damage. The colonised subject suffered from a profound maladjustment to modernity and the civilisation presented by colonisers.2