Mental Health in the Black Community

Thank you all for the overwhelming response to my thoughts, my experience and my blog! I've gotten text messages, phone calls, Facebook inbox messages, Facebook wall posts, and comments on Instagram.

In the midst of all the feedback my next blog post came to me: mental health in the black community. There is stigma in every racial and ethnic community around mental health. But especially so in the black community. There is the myth of the black superwoman, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments of the 1930s, those who believe in the power of prayer over medicine, and a distrust of doctors. For numerous reasons, black people do not seek medical help. Especially psychiatric help.

There is nothing more important than self-care. It is not a sign of weakness to ask for help. We were not meant to soldier on alone. We are part of communities for a reason.

My advice:

1. Seek help. See a therapist. Not everyone is willing to take medicine, the side effects alone can be a deterrent. But talk therapy is cathartic.
2. Use your support network of family and friends. If they aren't willing to help you in your time of need, maybe they aren't real friends anyway?
3. Seek out support groups such as Narcotics Anonymous (NA), Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), and National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI). Each group holds local meetings in a town near you.
4. If you need medicine, take it.
5. Build a life that supports your wellness: minimize your stress (I'll write a blog about stress later), get your finances in order, make time for leisure, eat healthy, remove toxic people from your life.
6. If you are spiritual, pray. Seek out your minister, pastor, rabbi, imam or other religious leader. 
7. Exercise. There is lots of proven scientific research about the mental health benefits of exercise. Also, try to maintain a healthy weight. This can be hard on psychiatric medicines, but try.
8. Keep regular appointments with your primary care doctor. Some psychiatric drugs require monitoring through blood work.
9. If you don't have health insurance, seek out charity care. Hospitalizations, psychiatric drugs, therapy appointments are all very expensive. But don't let the cost deter you from getting the help you need.
10. Get adequate amounts of sleep. You can trigger an episode if you are not.

There's More Than One Way to be Black/ More Than One Way to Give Back

So. Thursday (May 2009), at the reception for my graduation, a young, black psychology professor joined my table. He congratulated me and then proceeded to ask me about my plans. I informed him I'd be teaching high school English at an all-girls, private school in a wealthy, overwhelmingly white district. However, the school is more diverse than the town, as the students come from various communities. Anyhoo, he made "that face" when I said the town and school. That disapproving face. That face that questions your commitment to "racial uplift." That face that I wanted to slap...

For the past two years I've been working in a charter school in the heart of Newark. Let me be clear: I HATE IT! The leadership is lacking, to say the least; the students are difficult, disrespectful, and ignorant to their own ignorance; the morale of the staff is non-existent; and the physical environment is not safe (my first year there were about four shootings nearby). I have very strong ideas about the problems of urban/low-income education. Poor students do not need to be educated "differently." What Newark needs: a strong, firm leadership supporting quality teachers teaching a quality curriculum holding high expectations for the students' academic, social, and behavioral abilities. I honestly cannot speak for all of Newark, but I am so saddened by what is/has transpired at my school. 

Newark, obviously, it is a Title I district. In this era of accountability frenzy (which is not a bad thing), some districts have taken to "teaching to the test" in a way that narrows the curricular focus. One result is that the students are shortchanged on an education. The content is lacking. Students at my school thought the Earth was the center of the universe :( Students at my school could not tell me who Hitler was or about the Holocaust :( The only black activists they know are MLK and Harriet Tubman :(

I shared this with the black professor and he, playing the devil's advocate, tried to guilt me into re-evaluating my choice. He said who but you then can/will address these issues? Newark is inundated with the least prepared teachers, the teachers no other district will take, why would you leave? I told him I, an eternal optimist, am jaded and cynical now. And for my sanity I cannot be swallowed by the cause. Its hard work when all around you the weight of the lack of support and services and technology and morale make you exhausted. 

There are black students in the private school. Having been in a PWI-environment (predominantly white institution, Duke) myself I feel equally situated to contribute to the black students in the suburbs as I do with my Newark heritage and feeling obligated to give to Newark. I have matured and my thinking has evolved. I don't HAVE to be in the thick of the ghetto to make my mark. But in order to make ANY mark I have to feel supported and happy and optimistic.