Question

Psychiatric diagnoses are often shaped by cultural and historical biases. the diagnosis of "drapetomania" was applied to

Answer 1

This was a pseudoscientific diagnosis applied to black slaves who were wanting to run away from their masters. It was thought that, by running away from the plantation, black slaves were showing that they simply did not want to do the work that was Biblically intended for them. The idea that slave-masters could treat their help as equals was seen as a contributing factor, in the mind of Samuel Cartwright, the physician who conjectured this specific malady.