In the 1960s, policymakers and mental health experts joined forces to participate in President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. In her insightful interdisciplinary history, physician and historian Mical Raz examines the interplay between psychiatric theory and social policy throughout that decade, ending with President Richard Nixon's 1971 veto of a bill that would have provided universal day care. She shows that this cooperation between mental health professionals and policymakers was based on an understanding of what poor men, women, and children lacked. This perception was rooted in psychiatric theories of deprivation focused on two overlapping sections of American society: the poor had less, and African Americans, disproportionately represented among America's poor, were seen as having practically nothing. Raz analyzes the political and cultural context that led child mental health experts, educators, and policymakers to embrace this deprivation-based theory and its translation into liberal social policy. Deprivation theory, she shows, continues to haunt social policy today, profoundly shaping how both health professionals and educators view children from low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse homes.

What's Wrong with the Poor?: Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty (Studies in Social Medicine)

The rise and widespread acceptance of psychosurgery constitutes one of the most troubling chapters in the history of modern medicine. By the late 1950s, tens of thousands of Americans had been lobotomized as treatment for a host of psychiatric disorders. Though the procedure would later be decried as devastating and grossly unscientific, many patients, families, and physicians reported veritable improvement from the surgery; some patients were even considered cured. The Lobotomy Letters gives an account of why this controversial procedure was sanctioned by psychiatrists and doctors of modern medicine. Drawing from original correspondence penned by lobotomy patients and their families as well as from the professional papers of lobotomy pioneer and neurologist Walter Freeman, the volume reconstructs how physicians, patients, and their families viewed lobotomy and analyzes the reasons for its overwhelming use. Mical Raz, MD/PhD, is a physician and historian of medicine.

The Lobotomy Letters: The Making of American Psychosurgery (Rochester Studies in Medical History)

The University of Rochester is one of the country's top-tier research universities. Our campuses are home to 200 academic majors, more than 2,000 faculty and instructional staff, and some 10,000 students.The University gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College, School of Arts and Sciences, and Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are complemented by its Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, School of Medicine and Dentistry, School of Nursing, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, and the Memorial Art Gallery. 





University of Rochester

Mical Raz, MD, PhD, MSH is Charles E. and Dale L. Phelps professor in public policy and health, and associate professor of history and medicine at the University of Rochester.

She completed her medical training at Tel Aviv University, from where she also received a PhD in history of medicine. Before moving to the US for a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale, she worked at the Tel Aviv Medical Center and volunteered with Physicians for Human Rights. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital in 2015, followed by a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a practicing hospitalist at the University of Rochester’s Strong Memorial Hospital, and is board certified in internal medicine.

A historian of American psychiatry, Raz is interested in the intersection of psychiatry, poverty and politics. Her current research project is a history of child abuse policy in the United States, from the 1970s and onwards.

She is the author of The Lobotomy Letters: The Making of American Psychosurgery (University of Rochester 2013), which was awarded the Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Career Development Award. Her second book, What's Wrong with the Poor? Race, Psychiatry and the War on Poverty (UNC 2013), was a 2015 Choice Outstanding Academic Title.

Foster Care and Adoptions

Child Welfare

Psychiatry

Education Policy

Race  Culture  and Ethnicity

Poverty & Public Policy

Education

Child Abuse Policy

Public Health

Child Protective Services

Adoption Services

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antimask-ordinances-amount-to-disability-discrimination

Charles E. and Dale L. Phelps Professor in Public Policy and Health

University of Rochester health policy expert Mical Raz says anti-mask ordinances amount to disability discrimination for individuals with compromised immune systems—that includes people who have cancer and autoimmune disease, as well as those who have received organ transplants. As Dr. Raz explained in a recent Washington Post essay, immunocompromised individuals—even those who are vaccinated—may now find themselves inadequately protected in workplaces where mask requirements are legally banned and there are no vaccine requirements.

 Dr. Raz also co-authored a piece in the JAMA Health Forum discussing the implications of some states banning attempts to mandate masking. As she points out, vaccines have been less effective in individuals with different categories of immunosuppression. Dr. Raz concludes that allowing mask requirements is an important form of disability accommodation.



Anti-mask ordinances amount to disability discrimination

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