Mental distress and the African and Caribbean diasporas in twentieth-century British fiction

The history of twentieth-century immigration by the African and Caribbean Diasporas to Britain is a history of mental distress.This thesis focusses on the social elements-conditioned by racism, gender inequities, and colonialism-that cause mental distress in the protagonists of three British novels.The first, Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, published in 1956, explores the struggles of single, working-class men of Caribbean and African origin in a hostile, postwar, British environment.The second, Buchi Emecheta's Second-Class Citizen, appeared in 1974, at the height of Black Power and amid military rule in Nigeria, the heroine's country of origin; this novel portrays the stress faced by a middle-class, educated woman and mother, in London, within a disintegrating traditional marriage.Caryl Phillips' Foreigners, published in 2007, details the depression of three men from three eras of emigration to Britain.The three texts provide a cinematic view into the protagonists' social contexts, including racially problematic housing, jobs, policing, childcare, emotional support, neighbourhoods, and language.Noting that "linking racism to mental health has multiple, inter-related connections" (Chakraborty 131), the authors of a "relatively new approach in deterring the health effects of racial discrimination" find that the "most common outcomes of these studies have been mental health (e.g.depression, psychological distress" (Chakraborty 127).The causes of mental distress may be fully understood in these !Sanyal panded to include Africans, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, and mixed-race immigrant groups living in Britain.In recent years, the risk of suicide has been higher among these other racial groups: "A recent study using National Confidential Inquiry (NCI) data from England and Wales (Bhui and McKenzie 2008) found higher rates of suicide among Black Africans and Black Caribbean men aged 13-24 who had been in contact with mental health services within the preceding year" (Bhui 141).Nonetheless, this research is in its infancy, and there has been little effort to connect racism and mental distress among British immigrants in a historical perspective.At least until the second half of the twentieth century, Western psychiatry perpetuated racist ideology: "racismhas permeated into psychiatry throughout its development, informing and fashioning its theory and practice" (Fernando 51).The pioneering psychiatrist Frantz Fanon addresses racist ideology in his 1952 literary and psychoanalytic work, Black Skins, White Masks, but this work offers a limited history of and social context for mental distress and racism

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