High Substance Abuse : Impact On Mental Health, And Internalized Oppression

The continuous trauma that they endured has negatively affected the mental health and physical health of the population. Native Americans are at higher risk for depression, physical/sexual abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse, and mental health issues (McLeigh, 2010). Native American youth are three times more likely to commit suicide than the average population. Native Americans in general are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression and five times more likely to have alcoholism. Colonization not damaged natives mentally, but also brought harm to their physical health as Europeans brought diseases (measles, chicken pox, smallpox, etc) to America (McLeigh, 2010). In order for this population to be served to treat their many medical and mental health issues brought on by years of trauma, policies must be implemented to help Native Americans specifically. However, the reality is that natives mental health needs are often ignored (Gone, 2004). There have been policies that have attempted to meet the needs, but much more is needed. In the most recent action towards improving mental health services for natives, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 permanently gave authorization to the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (Ross, Garfield, Brown, & Raghavan, 2015). This policy will be discussed and analyzed to examine further needs for services in this

The experience of racism will bring negative stress and emotion, and may have the risk to develop a range of psychological and physiological problems (Sherwood, 2013). Ferdinand (2013) reports the racism problems among Aboriginal Australian by using a survey. The outcome highlights that almost every Aboriginal who participated in this survey had experienced racism during daily activity, and they or their family members have all experienced a different level of stress when coping with racism. In spite of the anti-racist practice has improved the relationship between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people, but the ongoing forms of discrimination are still continuing and impacts on Indigenous mental health. Furthermore, Indigenous Australian has a higher prevalence of smoking, alcohol and drug intake. The psychological stress they experience may consequently lead to harmful alcohol and drug use, which also causes the mental health problem among Indigenous Australians. Bearing in mind the previous points, all those risk factors and issues for Aboriginal mental health have contributed the high rate of mental illness and also leads to suicide or self-harm behaviours among Aboriginal

Takaki’s book, A Different Mirror, offers the multicultural history of the United States. This book provides the reader with the American experience of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Irish Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Jewish Americans. During this time, America demonstrated manifest destiny and the Master Narrative. They were led by the belief of “white purity,” which these ethnic groups threatened. America exhibited supremacy over all of these ethnic groups. Takaki’s work allows me to become aware of the history and the outcomes of manifest destiny and the Master Narrative.

Research indicates that colonial policies related to residential schools, reserve communities, loss of traditional lands, and erosion of language and cultural traditions that lead to cultural continuity have created a loss of cohesion and identity in Indigenous communities which have impacted family health behaviors (MacNeil 6). Although this may

Historical trauma is a concept that refers to the wounding of generations due to traumatic experiences such as boarding schools, forced displacement, and genocide. Responses to this distress manifest in a number of social issues. For example, alcoholism and substance abuse could be recognized as attempts to numb unresolved grief. Other manifestations of emotional responses to this trauma include abuse, depression, domestic violence, and suicide. A framework for understanding the effects of historical trauma on communities is provided by Evans-Campbell (2008) in her article, “Historical Trauma in American Indian and Native American Communities”. These three levels include individual-level impacts, family-level impacts, and community-level impacts.

Paradise Remade: The Politics of Culture and History in Hawaii. Philidelphia: Temple Universtiry Press 1993. Print.

This may seem beneficial for Asian Americans at first; however, the model minority myth is actually detrimental to many segments of the population. This is especially true of recent immigrant Asian Americans. These individuals become deprived of resources because they are expected to have the same level of success as Asian Americans who have already lived in the U.S. for generations. Even in academia, the model minority myth causes Asian Americans to be understudied and misunderstood. Because Asian Americans are perceived to be successful and well-integrated individuals, Lee et al. (2001) show how there is “not enough research” that investigates Asian American mental health (160). In other words, even though some current data show higher rates of mental illness among Asian Americans, the model minority myth has distracted scholars from studying Asian American mental health. Thus, to ensure that Asian

In this article, Professor King says loss of culture, land and language all play a part in poor health. Having an identity, he says, is especially important for mental health. As for example, many native children in Canada were taken from their families and sent to live at the residential schools. They were educated in the european system, they never had a normal chance to develop a cultural identity. The schools’ so-called purpose was to provide education for native children. But the real purpose was to eliminate native culture from Canada. As Reverend A.E. Caldwell of his school in 1938 said “The problem with the Indians is one of morality and religion. They lack the basic fundamentals of civilized thought and spirit, which explains their childlike nature and behavior. At our school we strive to turn them into mature Christians who will learn how to behave in the world and surrender their barbaric way of life and their treaty rights, which keep them trapped on their land and in a primitive existence. Only then will the Indian problem in our country be solved.” Caldwell view of aboriginal culture and how they should be assimilated to the european culture is how most ministers of the schools thought about native culture. Students were forbidden to speak their language or practice their culture, and were often punished for doing so. All these awful acts at residential schools made natives suffer loss

The people of Hawaii and other Pacific Island Nation groups have experienced great injustice from their colonial powers and the acts of imperialism. Lands were seized, cultural practices banned, language lost, and people were even forced to move away from their homes for the purpose of bomb testing. The United States and other countries abroad sent out representatives to do their work for them; in return their future actions would be justified in describing the Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders as savages that need to have wider powers enforced upon them; thus resulting in a tangled web of political mythologies.

In the early twentieth century, Asian Americans in the United States faced to lots of obstacles. Since they lived in a “different shore”, they were treated as unassimilable people, and therefore, they experienced many unequal and discriminative treatments. Both Asian Americans lived in Hawaii and the mainland lived in unbearable life under racial discrimination. However, due to geographical and ethnic differences, Asian Americans in the mainland had more difficult time, since majority of the United States’ population were white people. Asian Americans in the mainland had an intense competition with white working class. In other words,

Since Asian Americans are mostly immigrants and their substance abuse issues are often close related to acculturation status, based on the conceptual framework of acculturation, the key to explain this phenomenon is to understand the cultural distance (Berry, 1997), the difference between the culture and values between society of origin and society of settlement. In this case, it is necessary to understand the different attitudes (attitudes of original society and that of settlement society) toward specific substance abuse issues (alcohol, drugs, tobacco) and the different attitudes toward the specific ethnic group.

The Hawaiian culture is both diverse and unique, with its own language, traditions, and beliefs. Despite these multi-faceted characteristics, certain broad stereotypes about the culture persist in the non-Hawaiian population. My paper will explore where race, prejudice and cultural stereotypes come from and how both Hawaiian and non-Hawaiian cultures reinforce these stereotypes.

Imagine being a Native American and suffering the horrors of being a prisoner of the Japanese, and later restricted to a lonely, alienated reservation in New Mexico. How would you cope with the trauma of the war and the discrimination that would follow? Without preserving their ceremonies, stories and traditional culture the Native Americans would not have made it through the racism, depression, and alcoholism that resulted from being mistreated. The book, Ceremony, by Leslie Silko described the racism that the Indians faced from the Whites on the reservation, how the soldiers were treated during World War II, the importance of storytelling in their culture, and how some Indians used alcohol as their refuge.

Before we evaluate Johnny’s behaviour, it is important that we analyze the impacts of intergenerational trauma and how they have contributed to Johnny’s lack of well-being. Prior to colonialism, Indigenous Peoples withheld their own systems of governance, economy, trading, and furthermore. Before the arrival of Europeans, Indigenous Peoples were able to satisfy all of their material and spiritual needs through the resources that the land had provided for them. All Indigenous Peoples believed that their values and traditions were gifts from the Creator. One of the most important and most common teachings was that people should live in harmony with the natural world and all it contained. (Truth And Reconcilation Commission, 2015.) This respect for the land and all of its people was reflected through songs, dances, festivals and ceremonies. (Truth and Reconcilation Commission, 2015.) However following colonialism, all of these systems had been attacked and disrupted. While many Indigenous Peoples still continue to follow these traditions and practices, it is evident that so many of their existing systems had been destroyed and will not be the same as they once were.

A vulnerable population are people that have specific characteristics, or risk factors, that increase the probability of developing health problems (Harkness & DeMarco, 2012, p.103). A Vulnerable is important because anyone can become a part of this population. One is going to be describing the characteristics of substance abusers. Next, give the common health issue and needs. Then, give specific resources that Peoria have to offer. Finally, how substance abuse relates to Healthy People 2020. Overall, this will give one an overview of the vulnerable population such as substance abusers.