In their articles the Black Panther Party encouraged a critical stance towards medical professionals, especially the idea that medical professionals hold expertise about the lived experience of those diagnosed with psychiatric disabilities. 

Critical Stance Towards Medical Professionals

In the articles the Black Panther does not argue that all psychosurgery or pharmaceutical treatments were wrong, and the Black Panthers did not express a belief that Black people wouldn't be disabled and therefore wouldn't need them. Rather specific care was given to the idea the psychosurgery and forced pharmaceutical treatments were harmful because they were being done primarily in coercive and nonconsensual ways among individuals held by the state through imprisonment, mental incarceration, or veteran status.

The BPP did not discount the realness of psychiatric disability and the desire for psychiatric care.

Not Distancing Blackness from Disability

In their articles about psychosurgery the Black Panther centered the voices and harm experienced by Black disabled people and how these experiences were part of the oppression faced by Black disabled people at the hands of the medical, prison, and military industrial complexes.

Centering of Disabled People of Color

Schalk notes that while the BPP did a lot of good work to push for the end of psychosurgery they did fail to avoid ableist language and sentiments. Schalk examines this through the lens of the use of the term "vegetable" in the Black Panther and alternative rhetorical approaches the Black Panther could've taken.

Schalk's Critique of the Black Panther's Coverage

- Centering of Disabled People of Color
- Critical Stance Towards Medical Professionals
- Not Distancing Blackness from Disability
- Critique of the Black Panther's Coverage

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Currently, people of color are more likely to be paid participants in phase I of a clinical trial which is the initial safety test for a drug or medical device. The participation of Phase I participants is often driven by financial incentives. White people are most likely to be the participants in phase III of a clinical trial which tests the effectiveness of a drug or medical device. Phase III participation is often driven by volunteering because of medical needs.

How the Predatory Nature of Medical Research Studies Continues

- Byers experience of racism in the army and links to suicidal ideation
- Byers' race being represented as a key factor in his treatment at the hospital
- Byers' mental disability being framed as produced and sustained from racist and ableist social structures.

How the Article Emphasizes Race and Racism

Schalk sees this photo as humanizing Byers and Wallace while not giving any information to the reader about how they should feel about the article - which seems to contradict the use of the words victim and appeals in the title.

Schalk's Analysis of Photograph

Wallace permitted the spinal tap and then was contacted by a doctor at the hospital asking for parental consent to perform an experimental brain operation. It was explained to Wallace that if Byers recovered he would be a "vegetable." Wallace asked for time to consult with family members and did not give verbal or written consent. Wallace however rushed down to the hospital and when she arrived found Byers already in surgery. 

Byers' Experience of Psychosurgery 

In this chapter Schalk addresses the Panthers' fight against psychiatric abuse and how this work overlapped and intersected with their work against the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, and other forms of state violence. Schalk argues the BPP protested psychiatric abuse through:
(1) Collaborating with existing networks of activist groups
(2) Publishing of pieces in the Black Panther
(3) participation in public interest lawsuits to sue Oakland area nursing homes.

BPP Critiques of Mental and Carceral Institutions

- Articles Putting Pressure on Vacaville
- David Hilliard Autobiography
- "Tearing Out Our Thoughts: Psychosurgery and the Black Community"
- California State Senate Hearings
- Stories Run Concurrently with 504 Sit-In

Black Panther Party Fight Against Return of Psychosurgery

Neither "Burn Your Brains Out" or "Vacaville 'Medical' Facility" used the words psychosurgery or lobotomy, despite the discussion of psychosurgery. However both articles detailed the procedures performed.

Terminology in "Burn Your Brains Out" and "Vacaville 'Medical' Facility"

Crockett's plan is based in his experiences at Chester. His plan does not deny that some prisoners may need or want medication either temporarily or permanently. It also does not deny the reality of mental disability or distance Blackness from it. Rather, this plan gives agency and acknowledges that prisoners mental capacity and stability may change over time. It gives back agency to those like Crockett who were being help in psychiatric, medical, and prison institutions under and assumption that they are incompetent.

Crockett's Improvement Plan as Disability Politics

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027003

Black Disability Politics

Another example of the exploitation of Black bodyminds in medical research is that Dr. Marion Sims tested on enslaved women while developing modern gynecological methods.

Example: Dr. Marion Sims

Another example of exploitation of poor and racialized bodyminds in medical research is that poor and racialized people are more likely to be used as living educational tools at teaching hospitals and there has been a historical reliance on medical on Black bodies as cadavers.

Example: Use of Cadavers and Live Educational Tools

Approaches taken by the Black Panther in Psychosurgery Articles

Byers was ignored in the hospital after the surgery and allowed to wander the hospital to the point that Byers at one point left the building entirely. 

Byers Time after the Surgery

Schalk uses the term psychiatric abuse as an umbrella term for the violence practices within the psychiatric industrial complex. This includes but is not limited to forced pharmaceutical treatment, psychosurgery, use of electroshock therapy, prolonged restraint or confinement, coercion, unpaid labor, and denial of access to food or human contact. Psychiatric abuse is more likely to be targeted at marginalized peoples especially those with diagnosed or assumed mental disabilities.

Schalk's Definition of Psychiatric Abuse

Schalk uses Margaret Price's defintion of mental disability. Price defines mental disability as a category of disability that includes intellectual, cognitive and psychiatric disabilities, mental illness, m/Madness, and a/Autism, along with brain injury or psychiatric survivorship. This term was created to enable coalition.

Schalk's Definition of Mental Disability

1. "Principles of Radical Psychiatry" by Claude Steiner
2. Connections between Prison and Mental Institutions

How the Fight Against Psychiatric Abuse fit into Larger BPP Ideology

In 1971 when "Vacaville-America's Headquarters for Medical Genocide" appeared in the Black Panther, it was found that doctors from Vacaville's Psychiatric Diagnosis Unit applied for federal funds for a psychosurgery program. The plan was to use psychosurgery against prisoners that psychiatrists deemed to be "biologically violent." This application was met with mainstream alarm over the potential for abuse in psychosurgery. 

Vacaville Medical Facility's Use of Psychosurgery

David Hilliard - former Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party - was also imprisoned at Vacaville and later went on to detail this experience in his 1993 autobiography "This Side of Glory."

David Hilliard

"Tearing Out Our Thoughts: Psychosurgery and the Black Community" published on January 6, 1973 in The Black Panther was the first article published by the paper to use the word psychosurgery.

"Tearing Out Our Thoughts: Psychosurgery and the Black Community"

In 1973 the Black Panther Party addressed the California State Senate, with representation from lawyer Fred J. Hiestand, about their opposition to the Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Black Panther Party Testimony to the California State Senate

The Black Panther published their final articles on psychosurgery in 1977 - these articles, published concurrently with coverage of the 504 Sit-In, detailed the story of Lou Byers.

Black Panther 1977 articles about Psychosurgery

One example of a description in "Burn Your Brains Out" included the detailing of the insertion of electrode needles into an inmate's brain in order to burn out the part that was deemed to be a description of amygdalotomy.  

Example of Terminology used in "Bun Your Brains Out"

Schalk makes particular note of how the word psychosurgery was not used until "Tearing Out Our Thoughts: Psychosurgery and the Black Community," I have two thoughts as to why this is. 

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