As a black person, I can easily say that mental illness is one of many things that tend to be overlooked by the black community. Some, as ignorant as it may sound, call it a “White people thing.” White people have mental issues, as if other races are excluded from having these types of issues as well. What is troublesome about mental issues in the black community is even when they are visible to the eyes of many people, they will still be placed under the rug and ignored.
Because as part of the black community or the human community in general, the last thing that anyone wants to be looked at is crazy. They will talk about you, say that you are incapable or inadequate, and hold you less accountable to the life that you worked so hard to achieve. Mental issues in the black community also often go unnoticed because most refuse to speak to someone else about their issues. A shrink is considered to most people as a stranger just analyzing the life out of your mind at a high cost.
Take Kanye West for a second. The past few weeks, the media has highlighted his past few concerts where he has been late and goes on a rant about numerous people and then leaves, leaving concert goers upset and confused at the same time.
Then he cancels the rest of his tour and checks into a hospital. No one claims to say the Kanye may have something wrong with him mentally. All they say is what a brat he is or how he is a grown man and should not be throwing temper tantrum in order to get what he wants. For Kanye, he is considered a black male, which in most cases is considered strong, masculine, able to hold it together, but the moment he slips up and has some sort of break down, instead of actually seeing if he has an issue, we knock him down even further.
It’s hard for many to take on the issue of mental illness because it’s a diverse subject, depending on the circumstances, but refusing to acknowledge that it even exist makes it even worse. There are people dying every day of mental illness and others look around and try to make sense of how that have happened to them or refusing to accept the fact that they could possibly have the sort of issue, as if that is the worst thing that has happened to them.
The black community needs to take on mental illness and make sense of it somehow so it no longer becomes another unsolved issue. After all, mental illness is not a white person problem. Not one race is immune to it.