Antipsychotics and Antiracism?

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Antipsychotics certainly can’t fix everything, but I have seen racism decrease with antipsychotics. It does blow my mind when this happens. It’s probably not that “racism” got better, but that the person quit paying too much attention to useless details in their environment and misinterpreting them. A person with paranoia might see a person looking different from them and pay too much attention to this (it’s a salience issue) and then misinterpret the different person as threatening (when in fact, they are just different from the observer). These differences might be as small as a “not right” observations as occurs in Capras delusions. In these delusions, the person with paranoia might look at a loved one and notice a small difference and misinterpret it as the loved one being replaced with an identical alien or imposter. If this can occur with something small in a familiar loved one, imagine the impact it could have on observing a person from a different racial, ethnic or cultural background. Misintepration delusions are common in the forensic population and are a risk factor for violence. Typically, people with psychosis are very low risk for violence against others.

I teach my students, if a patient (who knows you) ever accuses you of not being you, get OUT because that is a risk factor violence and it’s directed at you in that moment. In my experience, the accusation is usually accompanied with a blank stare that chills your bones.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/delusional-misidentification