Black people don’t get to have mental illnesses. We’re either told “God will make a way” or that we’re “too young to be stressed out.” The stigma surrounding mental illness within the Black community makes it difficult for African-Americans to confront their mental health problems and that shouldn’t be the case.
Black people are not excluded from the possibility of having a mental illness. However, if you grew up in a Black household, you may think otherwise. In most of these spaces, prayer is your medicine and God is your therapist. The belief that faith and poor mental health cannot coexist is ancient false rhetoric that should have been expunged years ago. Let me be clear. I am not here to say that spirituality cannot be a helpful source of self-healing, but I am here to say that most of the time, it takes more than that. We cannot rely solely on the Bible to get us through every mental trial or tribulation that we face. As Black people, men especially, we have a resilient exterior that we feel needs to be upheld at all times and out of all of the obstacles that we face, mental health could not possibly be that serious. Wrong. We can’t put it off until later. We must handle it now. Our mental health cannot be ignored. It is our duty to tell both ourselves and the people of our Black communities that it is okay to not be okay. Asking for help is important. Checking on your friends, family and any other members of your Black community is important. Being informed is important. Professional help is important. Taking care of ourselves means taking care of our mental health, too.
You don’t have to have bills to pay to be depressed. You don’t have to have children to feed to be stressed out. You don’t have to have a career to suffer from anxiety. Another one of the issues that contributes to the stigma based around mental illness in the Black community stems from the idea that the only mental hardships you can ever face take place during “adult life.” African-Americans are not “adults” until they have moved out of the house and are making their own way. Black people are not allowed to have mental illnesses because we have roofs over our heads, food to eat, water to drink and clothes on our backs, so we clearly have nothing to worry about. Well, this is absolutely inaccurate. There are so many things that can contribute to mental health problems within the Black community beyond socioeconomic status that this rhetoric can easily be debunked with a few credible facts and statistics about familial relationships, romantic relationships, sexual relationships, friendships, environment, gender identity and lack of acceptance, sexual orientation and lack of acceptance, physical disabilities and more. Mental health within the Black community is not limited to any one subject.
While I would argue the fact that there is not access to sufficient and affordable mental health facilities, medicines or healthcare within every Black community and that institutional racism still exists within the court of law when it comes to mental health and a person that is not White, it is still vital for the stigma surrounding mental illness within the Black community to be obliterated. However, this will only be accomplished with education, self-care and peer support. We’ll tackle those other issues in another article.
Photo credit: The Odyssey