African American Mental Illness

Imagine having no rights in life. Imagine one day you get sick, and you go to the hospital to get better, but you get taken advantage of. How would all that make you feel? Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman. During her time, women didn’t have equal rights like men did, and African-Americans didn’t have equal rights like white people did. Since Henrietta was an African-American woman she had it rough, there were times that everyday tasks were a struggle. In 1951 she was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. She was treated at John Hopkins University, where doctors didn’t do all they could even if they said that was the case, and were Doctor George Gey took her cells from her cervix without consent. I watched the Law and Order episode titled “Immortal”, I found it to be extremely similar to a book I read titled The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot even though the show said in the beginning that this was not based on a true story.

Grey and his actions. Zakariyya holds onto to these damaging emotions which causes him to act out in rage and violence. Deborah and Zakariyya have very different ways of reacting and handling their emotions, however all the emotions they are feeling are valid in their obscure and painful situation. Henrietta’s life is the prime example of the level of racism in the healthcare system in the 1950s. The struggles that blacks faced during this time period were only made worse by the poor treatments from the doctors or even the complete disregard for their black patients. According to Skloot the issues relating to blacks seeking medical care could include being hospitalized later in stages of their sickness, fewer pain medications, and higher mortality rates. These facts that came from the racist healthcare system greatly influenced Henrietta’s life, by causing her more pain since the doctors kept sending her away without the appropriate treatment. This surely wouldn’t have happened if Henrietta was a middle class white woman. No one can know for sure, but perhaps giving Henrietta the proper care and treatment from the beginning would not only ease her suffering, but also her

The treatment of African Americans in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks demonstrates the lack of ethics in the United States health care system during the 1950s and 1960s. Under the impression that medical doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital were solely injecting radium treatment for cervical cancer, Henrietta Lacks laid on the surgical bed. During this procedure Dr. Lawrence Wharton Jr. shaved two pieces of tissue from her vagina, one from a healthy cervical tissue and one from the cancerous tumor, without Henrietta’s prior knowledge. After recovering from her surgery Henrietta exited the door marked, “Blacks Only,” the door that signified the separation between White and African-American patients. Had Henrietta been White, would the

Mental illness is an increasing problem in America. Currently about 26.2% of Americans suffer from a mental disorder. A mental illness/disorder is a medical condition that disrupts a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, and ability to relate to others and daily functions. Mental illness can affect humans of any age, race, gender and socioeconomic status. However the care that is needed to effectively cure and help the people affected by the illness is not equal for everyone here in American, especially for African Americans.

In 1951 there was a young black lady who was named Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was a tobacco farmer in Clover, Virginia. Her mother died giving birth and her father moved the family to Clover, where the children were distributed among some of the close relatives. In January of 1951 she went to John Hopkins hospital, which was the only place close to her that treated black patients at the time. Lacks described a “knot” in her stomach that ended up being cervical cancer. During her treatments two samples from her

This idea was blatantly ignored with the treatment of Henrietta and many others. Henrietta was a living, breathing, human being, that deserved equivalent treatment. She was instead, dehumanized into cells, her privacy invaded, and her family permanently damaged from the experience. Henrietta was not immortal. In reality, “Henrietta died at 12:15 a.m. on October 4, 1951” (86). From the unethical treatment she received to the blatant disregard for empathy with regard to her deathly illness, Henrietta was maltreated. John Moore’s case exposes the widespread nature of this problem. “It was very dehumanizing to be thought of as Mo,” claims Moore (201). “...I was Mo, I was the cell line, like a piece of meat” (201). John Moore endured the same as Henrietta. Both viewed as abstractions, their truths ignored. They both, however, hold a triumph. They contributed to the betterment of society, and helped to advance medical practices and cured countless

Black patients were also given fewer medicines and had high mortality rates (Skloot, 64). If Henrietta had been white, she would’ve been hospitalized at an earlier time and received more medicine to have a better chance of living. Also, if she was middle or upper class she would not have been receiving treatment from John Hopkins because she would’ve had health insurance and able to receive care at another

The other question that has to be asked is did the doctor know what he was doing was wrong at the time? The subject of consent was not yet a thing in nineteen fifty one especially for a poor African American woman who was taken to a separate ward than the Caucasian patients. There was also very little effort into protecting her identity when they named the cells HeLa. “When some members of the press got close to finding Henrietta’s family,

Throughout her book, Rebecca Skloot shared the story of Henrietta Lacks and how her cells became so important to science. This narrative involves racism, injustice, and ambition. Henrietta, for instance, alike the majority of African-Americans, was a poor tobacco worker, who lived in a small town called Clover. Blacks did not have the same benefits as white people. One significant difference was medical care: hospitals separated colored and white people using different floors one for whites and one for blacks. Evidently, the white section had more advantages; instead, some blacks could not even afford seeing a doctor and when they did, “it was understood that black people did not question white people’s

I must begin by stating that I am so glad the medical community has progressed since the time of Henrietta Lacks. It is reassuring to know that much greater progress has been made in treating patients correctly and informing them of what is happening. I am saddened that due to social stigma at that time, Henrietta Lacks was not afforded the same respect that perhaps another individual would have been given.

As discussed in class, little advancement has been made in the field of mental health care over the past two decades. Rates of mental illness continue to be high especially among certain subgroups, but progress has been stunted by stigma and social environmental issues. Mental health disparities, like many other health disparities, are embedded within a trend of socioeconomic differences (Miranda, McGuire, Williams, & Wang, 2008). Racial and class disparities exist among those afflicted

Safety for those with mental illness or physiological damage is at a low. Those who suffer metal illness or seem to show symptoms of physiological preference outside of the usual abnormalities are put through hell and back if they are sentenced to a psychiatric ward. Those who are put into mental hospitals are not that much well off, both circumstances come with a list of mistreatments towards patients and inmates.

During the fifties it was an ethical as well as a racial problem in the medical field of medicine. Blacks were treated like second class citizens, not people more like things.” The public wards at Hopkins were filled with patients, most of them black and unable to pay their medical bills. David drove Henrietta nearly twenty miles to get there, not because they preferred it, but because it was the only major hospital for miles that treated blacks.”

It is difficult to imagine a time when exploitation of patients was a normal practice. It is worse that such a time was not all that long ago. While reading the story of Henrietta Lacks, I consistently had to remind myself that times were different. Doctors did not necessarily intend to harm their patients in any way, however it is impossible not to feel pity for Henrietta, her family, and any others who were mistreated simply due to the ignorance of the times.

While reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot discrimination was a big issue in this book. However, the background of it talks about a young African American woman named Henrietta lacks. Henrietta had the first immortal cells, but never got the recognition she deserved due her race. During Henrietta times, which was 1951 discrimination was a big issue, especially in medical care. Skloot describes Henrietta entering the John Hopkins Hospital she sates “For Henrietta, walking into Hopkins was like entering a foreign country where she didn’t the language” (Skloot 16). She felt like a fish out of water when entering the Hopkins hospital. She went to John Hopkins to be treated due to which lead to cancer. The hospital had walls to separate the whites from the blacks. They separated the people due to their race, it’s sad to see that discrimination to this day