Unlearning 'Excited Delirium': Acute Behavioural Disturbance, Race, Mental Health and Policing

The intersection of race, mental health and policing is a critical public health issue. Black people in the UK are more likely to be diagnosed with a mental health condition; less likely to receive treatment; seven times more likely to be killed by police restraint than white people. Research and policy at this intersection have been compromised by two interrelated concepts: ‘Excited Delirium Syndrome’ (ExDS) and Acute Behavioural Disturbance (ABD). ExDS is a discredited, racist pseudo-diagnosis popular in the US, describing victims of police violence as exhibiting ‘superhuman strength’ and being ‘impervious to pain’, echoing colonial ‘race science’. ABD is its inheritor in the UK. An interdisciplinary team will examine the historical, social, legal and spatial dimensions of restraint-related police killings attributed to ExDS/ABD in the UK, through the prism of casework-led ‘forensic architecture’ research methods. The project seeks a national reckoning with ABD and police restraint, through new approaches to an urgent, public health, social justice and human rights issue. We will pioneer community-led co-production models to advance Wellcome’s strategic goals by working closely with civil society leaders and individuals with lived experience to disentangle the biological, social and cultural factors of the topic, towards better future health outcomes.