“When
you combine a recession with COVID-19, and a pandemic of racial
inequality and police brutality, you see that throughout social
media, you see African Americans getting a double and triple dose of
stress.
“And so
what we see is an all time high need for mental health services. So
there's not a psychologist that I know who was not booked thoroughly
because of the need in the African American community.”
– Dr.
Alduan Tartt, Psychologist, PhD
While George Floyd's death
has emerged as a pivotal moment amid a national reckoning on race,
the issue extends far beyond one summer and one man. Before Floyd,
there was Tanisha Anderson, a unarmed Black woman seeking mental
health assistance killed by police in Cleveland in 2014, Shereese
Francis, a Black woman who was suffocated during a police encounter
in 2012, and countless others.
(Ryan
Shepard. “Black American anxiety at all-time high, experts say.”
ABC News.
September 05, 2020.)
The surging coronavirus
pandemic and subsequent social unrest from police violence have
resulted in a toxic daily environment that can have a deleterious
effect on Black Americans' mental health, experts say.
Dr. Thomas A. Vance of
Columbia University suggests that Black Americans are 20% more likely
to experience "serious mental health problems" than the
general population. The Black community suffers from an increased
rate of mental health concerns, including anxiety and depression.
They also found that Black youth who are exposed to violence are 25%
more likely to experience PTSD.
Suicide rates are rapidly
rising in the Black community, particularly among children. Among
high schoolers, 9.8% of Black students report attempting suicide,
compared with 6.1% of their white peers.
Suicide attempts among
white teens decreased between 1991 and 2017, but the rate rose in
Black teens in the same period.
(Thomas A. Vance, PhD.
“Addressing Mental Health in the Black Community.” Columbia
University Department of Psychology. February 8, 2019.)
The increased incidence of
psychological difficulties in the Black community is related to the
lack of access to appropriate and culturally responsive mental health
care, prejudice and racism inherent in the daily environment of Black
individuals, and historical trauma enacted on the Black community by
the medical field.
Moreover, given that the Black community exists at
the intersection of racism, classism, and health inequity, their
mental health needs are often exacerbated and mostly unfulfilled.
Issues related to economic insecurity, and the associated
experiences, such as violence and criminal injustice, further serve
to compound the mental health disparities in the Black population.
In 2018, researchers from
the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and
the Boston University School of Public Health examined data from
police killings between 2013 and 2016 and their effects on the mental
health of Black Americans.
"Our estimates,
therefore, suggest that the population mental health burden from
police killings among black Americans is nearly as large as the
mental health burden associated with diabetes," the authors
of the study wrote.
(Jacob Bor, SD;
Atheendar S Venkataramani, MD; Prof David R Williams, PhD; Alexander
C Tsai, MD. “Police killings and their spillover effects on the
mental health of black Americans: a population-based,
quasi-experimental study. The Lancet. June 21, 2018.)
Furthermore, the study
indicated that police killings during that time period contributed to
55 million poor mental health days among Black Americans annually.
These 55 million days can have a negative impact on people at work or
even everyday activities like going to the movies.
"[Police killings]
have affected people's everyday functioning. From people being
hyper-vigilant when you're just going outside to the onset of having
a panic attack when you're pulled over by the police, it has an
effect," Saleemah McNeil of the Oshun Family Center said.
Psychiatric Help for
Blacks
With one in five Black
Americans living in poverty, mental health care can be economically
unavailable for many. In 2018, Statistica (2020) shows 13.6 percent
of Black Africans have no health insurance. This can make it
extremely difficult to afford therapy.
Compounding the issue is a
severe lack of Black mental health professionals. Even with coverage,
it is a challenge to find a quality therapist who insurers will
cover. In 2017, the American Psychological Association reported that
only 2% of its members identified as Black or African American.
Some research shows more
stigma against those who seek mental health care in Black
communities. In many families, being Black means they should be
resilient and triumph against the odds. If they have a mental health
condition or seek mental health care, it may feel like a sign of
weakness.
Racism may also play a
more direct role in mental health stigma. Some Black people worry
that if they seek mental health care, people will see them as crazy
or dangerous. This could intensify the effects of systemic racism. Of
course, Black parents often have tough conversations with fairly
young children about police brutality and racism.
“I was
socialized in such a way that I thought was healthy, but it was
precluding me from dealing with mental health for what it truly was
and the great impact that it had. We are raised to believe that we
have to walk outside with a tough skin at all times to survive in the
world.”
– Shaun
J. Fletcher, professor at San Jose State University whose research
covers health disparities among African-American men
In other cases, white
therapists may use racist norms in therapy, or fail to acknowledge
racial trauma in Black mental health.
Living in White Space
What is it like to be
Black in America? Most Whites, understanding legal segregation was
struck down more than 50 years ago, do not comprehend even the
simplest pressures that still confront African Americans. Just
consider this: American society is still rife with overwhelmingly
white neighborhoods, malls, schools, restaurants, universities,
workplaces, religious institutions and other associations. Blacks
perceive such settings as “the white space,” which they often
consider to be informally “off limits” for people like them.
Desegregation efforts
didn’t bring about actual racial integration, as Kevin Kruse, a
history professor at Princeton University, notes in his 2005 paper.
Instead, it created “a new division in which the public world was
abandoned to blacks and a new private one was created for whites.”
(Kevin M. Kruse. “The
Politics of Race and Public Space: Desegregation, Privatization, and
the Tax Revolt in Atlanta. Journal of Urban History. July 1,
2005.)
De facto segregation has
reinforced a situation it which it is the norm for black people to be
“typically absent, not expected, or marginalized when present” in
shared spaces ranging from Ivy League universities to middle-class
suburbs, Elijah Anderson, a sociology professor at Yale University,
notes in his 2015 paper. It’s in these spaces where many social
rewards lie, from having a nice night out on the town to accessing
good education, employment, and money. There are severe consequences
when black people enter these white spaces.
(Elijah
Anderson. “The White Space.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
2015.)
Today, “protecting”
the white space often takes the form of making an unnecessary phone
call to the police. Racism is always about power. It is this
systemic, racist power that threatens the lives of Black Americans.
“Almost
any white person present in the white space can possess and wield
this enormous power” of excluding or bringing harm to black people
who enter these spaces. And those who feel especially exercised and
threatened by the rise of blacks may feel most compelled to wield
that power.
“For
some white people, the presence of a black person in a shared,
white-dominated space becomes a threatening symbol of black
advancement at the expense of whites. While certainly not all are
guilty of such acts, many can be mobilized in complicity to ‘protect’
the white space.”
– Elijah
Anderson
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