Schizophrenia and the Politics of Experience in Three Plays by Brian Friel

Abstract

In Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics, Nancy Scheper-Hughes states that the Irish and Northern Irish have the world's highest rates of hospitalization for schizophrenia, and, to establish that these rates do not merely reflect the availability of beds for treatment, she adds that Irish-Americans and Irish-Canadians are more frequently treated for schizophrenia than are members of other ethnic groups. The highest rate of schizophrenia in Ireland, she says, is in the West of Ireland in isolated rural areas dependent on peripheral agriculture and suffering from depopulation, and the most commonly afflicted are celibate males, suggesting that all of these factors are connected with Irish schizophrenia.