Research Paper Rough Draft Amara Payne

Prof Zink-UW 1020 10/14/2019

Strength: The Struggle between African-American Women and Stigma

surrounding Mental Health

Throughout the history of the African American people, many topics that were

visibly present within the community were never discussed, as time went on these

taboo subjects such as interracial relationships, natural hair and colorism have

become more and more prominent and popularized within mainstream culture,

sparking discussions, and better yet, changes; yet one subject remains in the dark,

the state of the mental health of our community. It’s something that we know is

there, and we have had the knowledge that it’s there and that there are treatments

available to our community for years, yet we still never take advantage of them. For

example, when we look at severe mental illnesses such as Schizophrenia, it has been

statistically shown that it affects men and women equally and that it occurs at

similar rates in all ethnic groups around the world. It has also been proven that most

findings through research suggests that the overall rates of depression are the same

among blacks and whites, and that it's just a manifestation of the symptoms that

tends to be different. So the question is, if mental illnesses, especially depression,

which represents 99% of all mind-brain illnesses, affects every race in the same way,

then why don’t we all talk about it at the same capacity? Why, within the
African-American community, are women chosen to be the backbone of a group of

people that is statistically just as affected as white people, and how in turn does this

affect the minds of the women of our community? I once heard someone say that ​“a

black woman in america will save you from yourself”​, but I ask, who will

save us?

To get to the bottom of this, we should first analyze what factors underlie

African American women's hesitancy to utilize mental health care and what stigma

surrounding mental health care deters them from seeking treatment. When we look

at ​African American Women's Perceptions of the Mental Health System: A

Qualitative Study​ , by Najma Abdus-Salaam we see throughout this study a lot of

common themes that I witness in day to day life with my family. For example, many

of the participants within the study shared that a cultural perception of mental

health with African American communities it that mental health treatment is viewed

as something negative, and that if you sought it out there was something inherently

“wrong with you” or you were deemed “crazy” by the broader community and

possibly even your family. They also discussed the stereotypes associated with

mental health and spoke on how stereotypically African American women are viewed

as strong, therefore, someone suggesting seeking mental health treatment was seen

by them as a weakness. However, many of the participants within the study signaled

that they believed that mental health treatment could be a valuable asset to their

community and that it was a resource that we have yet to explore, regardless of the
lack of pursuit of mental health treatment that is statistically reflected amongst Black

people. This conscious recognition raises the question that if we as African American

women are disproportionately exposed to multiple stressors such as lower-income

lifestyles, single-parent households, lack of healthcare, and racism, why is it so

uncommon within our community for us to reach out for help? What specific

pressure are we under, whether familial or communal and how can we change in

order to better our community? We could start by examining the day to day aspects

of our communal life and how this in turn affects the significance we place upon

events which in turn can affect the importance that we place on our feelings.

Another aspect that we can examine is the way that communities of color

interact with and relate to mental health issues in contrast with the way that the

white community has interacted with, and continues to interact with and relate to

mental health issues. Throughout the majority of my existence, I've been told by

older family members, especially older black women like my auntie’s and grandmas,

that mental illnesses are “for white people” and that women like us can't afford to

get caught up in therapy and the diagnosis of these illnesses, that we don’t have the

time for it, we’ve got bigger things to worry about. I remember one of the most

important lessons that I learned from my dad came from when he and I discussed

this seemingly taboo topic of mental illness, because much to his family's demise, he

supported my mom's decision in putting me in therapy after my parent's divorce.

This came as a shock to a lot of my family members, especially his mom, my

Grandma Helen. While discussing this, he and I spoke on the strife that most of our

community goes through on a daily basis. He says that the reason that our

community doesn't focus on mental health is mostly that we don't want to own up to

the fact that many of us have disorders such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD; in

layman’s terms, we don’t want to ever have to actually admit that there is something

wrong with us. I think that this comes from the fact that one of the only things that

our people has never had taken away from us was our strength and giving in to the

possibility of mental illness seems to take away that one constant that we have

always had. During our discussion he spoke on his younger life growing up in North

Nashville, what I know to be one of the worst parts of the town I call home; he stated

that “growing up in the hood was like growing up in a war zone; extreme poverty,

death, and danger everywhere, not knowing where your next meal was coming from,

and not even knowing when your next friend would die.” I distinctly remember that

being the day that he told me “bullets don't have eyes, so they don't know their

target.” I was able to fully understand this looming threat of death my dad described

to me the summer I was 16. That was the summer that Bdon was killed. He was a

hometown hero, a basketball player at one of the local schools who had earned a

scholarship to play in college, he was one of us that was finally going to make it out!

So you can see how when he died, it was like the whole community took a shot to the

jaw, we were knocked out. With his death, it seemed like even the best of us couldn’t

escape. So I suddenly understood, from that early age that the reason my community
doesn't seek to heal ourselves, it’s because we go through painful and traumatic

events almost every day.

I’ve said all of that just to show you that mental illness is apart of us, we just

don’t want anyone to know. So if you want to see someone coping with PTSD, just

come home with me, I’ll introduce you to my grandma Helen, a woman who’s family

had to run off the KKK to stop them from lynching her older brother, my Uncle

Richard. You want to see depression, I’ll introduce you to my friend Larry, one of

Bdon’s best friends and his teammate. Want me to show you anxiety, I’ll let you meet

my cousin Carlos, a man with more years in jail that in high school, trying to figure

out how to support all of his kids when the best job he can get is going back to the

streets. If you want to see a community riddled with mental illness all you have to do

is come see where I’m from, because I promise you that if you had seen what we’ve

seen, and live how we’ve lived, then you’ll know why we treat mental illness the way

we do. It’s not only affecting us, it’s apart of us. Our everyday lives. It’s widely known

fact that it’s a defining characteristic of our community, but it’s never widely

recognized, and I think that it is our intention to keep it that way.