Last week I had an anxiety attack. It wasn’t my first one and I was able to recognize the signs pretty easily. It caught me completely off guard — one moment I was reading on my couch, and the next I was struggling to breathe and crying uncontrollably. As terrifying as it was, I handled it the way I always did: gritting my teeth, keeping silent, and waiting for it to pass. I didn’t tell anyone about this attack, just as I hadn’t mentioned any of my previous ones.
Mental health is a serious issue in the black community. There are black people all over the country suffering from some form of mental illness and just as many of them who don’t recognize the problem or refuse to talk about it. If you were raised like me, mental illnesses always seemed like a “white people problem.” Black people don’t go to therapy, we go to church. Trying to talk to anyone about what was going on got you labeled as soft and weak, so you didn’t cry and kept everything to yourself, hoping it would go away in time. But a mental illness doesn’t pick and choose who it’s next target is; anyone can suffer from them, no matter what race or ethnicity they are.
Dr. Kerry Ressler, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University, interviewed around 8,000 people in Atlanta and discovered that there are higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder in this urban population than in war veterans. They’ve noticed similar instances in cities like D.C. and Chicago (Source). Black people in these communities are witness to extreme acts of violence, and have lost loved ones to the wars tearing apart their city. Some of them are directly involved and have experienced first-hand what it is like to see someone they care about get gunned down in front of them. That level of trauma would have an impact on anyone.
So why aren’t we talking about it?
Much of it stems from a lack of education. Most black people don’t know the difference between the many different types of mental illnesses or they don’t recognize the signs of what one entails. They normalize their symptoms as a part of aging or growing up. Another reason is the lack of resources and funds. When a black woman is impoverished and working two different jobs to feed her children, the last thing she is worried about is treating her depression. Therapy is expensive, medication to help treat mental illnesses are expensive. Many black people feel like their money could be better spent on something that is an actual issue for them.
As a community, black people have to do more to change the attitude we have towards mental illnesses. Many black people don’t even see it for what it is—a disease—and instead view it as a personal weakness. We have to educate each other on what it means to be mentally ill and work as a community to change the negative stigmas that surround these illnesses. We have to advocate for more affordable treatment so that those who are suffering can get the help they deserve before something tragic happens. We have to show support for those who are dealing with this instead of dismissing or ridiculing their issues.
You never know what you may be dealing with until you seek out the proper help. As black people, we deserve that help just as much as anybody else.
Sources:
