Neurasthenia at Mengo Hospital, Uganda: A case study in psychiatry and a diagnosis, 1906-50.

Abstract

This article uses a case-study approach to examine the complex and contradictory nature of diagnoses like neurasthenia in colonial Africa. Drawing on the case notes of European and African patients diagnosed with neurasthenia at the Church Missionary Society's Mengo Hospital, Uganda, it argues that in practice, and outside the colonial asylum in particular, ideas about race and mental illness were more nuanced than histories of psychiatry and empire might imply. At Mengo, the tales of pain and suffering recorded by the doctors remind us that there is more to the history of neurasthenia than colonial anxieties and socio-political control. This was a diagnosis that was negotiated in hospital examination rooms as much as in medical journals. Significantly, it was also a diagnosis that was not always reserved exclusively for white colonisers-at Mengo Hospital from the early 1900s neurasthenia was diagnosed in African patients too. It became part of a wider discussion about detribalisation, in which a person's social environment was as important as race.