Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome

This paper discusses the experiences of African American Women under slavery during the Slave Trade, their exploitation, the secrecy, the variety of tasks and positions of slave women, slave and ex-slave narratives, and significant contributions to history. Also, this paper presents the hardships African American women faced and the challenges they overcame to become equal with men in today’s society. Slavery was a destructive experience for African Americans especially women. Black women suffered doubly during the slave era.

In this essay, Stampp argues that slaves are the victims to a cruel system designed to take advantage of them. He fights for the sides of the slaves, portraying them as helpless in a world of pain and suffering. To prove this he looks toward the slaves who fake injury, ignorance, and even pregnancy to avoid having to work. This “preoccupation of bondsmen” as Stampp says, was a “Striking refutation of the myth that slavery survived because of the cheerful acquiescence of the slaves.” (Stampp 301) In this essay, Stampp is standing up against the idea that slaves are weak and incapable of functioning as free men. People said that the slaves had accepted their fate as slaves and were alright with it, but Stampp says they have not given up their will to fight for their freedom and that their rights as people will come. Stampp’s portrayal of slaves as the victim is in direct alignment with the shooting of Michael Brown in which Michael was made the victim far before anyone knew what really happened. The slaves that Stampp writes about all are sad and distraught but it’s possible that there may have been slaves who were in fact not too unhappy with their lives. In this instance, there is only one point of view, so another document with the counter to Stampp’s must be examined as

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a well known disorder that takes over the life of it’s victim. We know that anyone has the chance of facing this challenging disorder but does race/ culture have anything to do with it? Throughout this paper we will be trying to answer this question and many more. This paper’s main focus is on what post-traumatic stress disorder is, what evidence provided by researchers leads us to believe that race and ethnicity has something to do with PTSD rates and last but not least the few ways on how to treat PTSD patients properly.

Starting from a slave’s birth, this cruel process leads to a continuous cycle of abuse, neglect, and inhumane treatment. To some extent, slave holders succeed because they keep most slaves so concerned with survival that they have no time or energy to consider freedom. This is particularly true for plantation slaves where the conditions of slave life are the most difficult and challenging. However, slave holders fail to realize the damage they inadvertently inflict on themselves by upholding slavery and enforcing these austere laws and attitudes.

Everybody heard the saying: “stay out of grown folks business” but, what if you were finally grown enough to join the conversation. While getting into a deep conversation with an old friend about your goods and your bads. You are told by the expert that mental illness for Caucasian people is schizophrenia and mental illness for African American people is Bipolarism. This shocks you because you never heard of this before. Then everything starts to make sense why in particular some of us act, talk, think the way we do. Is the problems in the foods we eat? The drinks we drink? What we watch? Or is it society’s fault we chose to act the way we do? I would say Yes, because in history a man named Willie Lynch taught the way an African American man and woman are supposed to act in society as a piece of property for their owner. Not knowing we pick up some of these behaviors of Post Traumatic Slave syndrome. Are we sick and are we getting help for it? The answer is No, we are not getting help for our mental problems since we sometimes don’t know it exist. “Bipolar disorder affects approximately 5.7 million adult Americans, or about 2.6% of the U.S. population age 18 and older every year” (National Institute of Mental Health). Some of us need real help but don’t know who to go to for help. You might be feeling out of place, insane, irritable, euphoric, and talkative at the same time. When an individual has been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder they should follow the doctor’s orders

13.2% of the United States population identifies themselves as Black as African Americans, and of those over 16% had an mental illness that was diagnosable. The socio economic impact of a history of slavery, sharecropping and race-based exclusion from health, racism, spiritual beliefs, social and economic resources, education and other factors are key factors that contribute to African American disparities today. Many of these things are linked to mental health. According to the US department of health, African Americans are 20% more likely to report having serious psychological distress than in non-Hispanic whites (. Despite knowing this, African Americans are less likely to seek mental health services than white Americans.

After reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, it is clear to see the true horrors behind the entirety of slavery. It is one thing to learn about it from a textbook or to sit through a lecture, but it is a completely different experience to get an account of how grossly inhumane, frightening, and appalling slavery really was from someone who experienced the terrors first-hand. Reading this narrative provided extremely descriptive details of how slaves truly were treated. Douglass recounted the time where he had often:

Mr. Reynolds described direct exposure to trauma by experiencing recurrent threats of death, injury, witnessing the death and injury of close compatriots. Prior to expressing symptoms or exposure to the traumatic events, Mr. Reynolds described himself as a “happy-go-lucky,” “upbeat,” and enjoyed activities such as boot camp. He did not discuss or display pre-existing disorders or history of maltreatment or trauma prior to deployment. There was no discussion or mention of biological or inherited traits relating to trauma, anxiety, or aggression. Socioculturally however, as an African American man growing up in a “financially struggling household” suggests that perhaps while

It does not matter who the person is, what they do, or even what race they are, they are all susceptible to PTSD. Once this PTSD enters their mind, it will be hard to stop, however it still is possible. Some people eventually overcome it, however it takes drive and motivation to overcome it, and if the victim is lacking in that someone else must make up for it, whether that be a doctor or a loved one, somebody must fight it. PTSD is not invincible and can be defeated, and those who are willing to work can defeat it, and they will. Concluding it all, PTSD is a horrible disorder, it wreaks havoc on those who it’s grasps reaches, and makes their life a living hell, therefore it must be prevented, and for it to be prevented people must care, so instead of ignoring it all, take to the sufferers and make a

In the interviews African Americans shared how on a daily basis they found themselves dealing with anxiety, fear, humiliation, shame, and stress.”(Thompson-Miller 3). Everyday with feeling all of these emotions is in no way how a life should be lived. “The ‘stress hormone’ cortisol is believed to create a domino effect that hard-wires pathways between the hippocampus and amygdala in a way that might create a vicious cycle by creating a brain that becomes predisposed to be in a constant state of fight-or-flight”.(Christopher Bergland 1). All of the other emotions combined also triggered a PTSD like syndrome called “segregation stress syndrome” .“segregation stress syndrome are similar to PTSD symptoms documented in psychiatric literature. However, “segregation stress syndrome” differs from PTSD because the traumatic experience was not a one-time occurrence; it was sustained, over time, in African American communities. In addition, the racial violence that occurred was a form of systematic chronic stress, the type that has been shown to have a detrimental impact on a person’s psychological well-being”. (Thompson-Miller

David R. Williams and Ruth Williams Morris write in “Racism and Mental Health: The African American Experience” that negative attitudes of white Americans resulting in the formation of racist policies contribute to mental health problems for African Americans, as they attempt to cope. Mental health issues, Williams and William Morris continues, can be a consequence of living within a lower income bracket with decreasing prospects for future improvement, an inability to attain needed “resources” e.g. the choice between prescription medications and food, or finally, internalizing the damaging opinions.

People who suffered from Confederate slavery have different thoughts of the flag than southerners. Southerners celebrate their Confederate ancestors but for people like African Americans who have suffered from racial injustice and slavery see these monuments and symbols as the horror and painful memories of their ancestors in slavery. African Americans mostly deal with some form of racism in their life time. acts of racism can lead to post traumatic stress disorder. A definition by Google says "A condition of persistent mental and emotional stress occurring as a result of injury or psychological shock, typically involving disturbance of sleep and constant vivid recall experience, with dulled responses of others and the outside world". PTSD

African Americans living in urban, low-income, impoverished environments are at high risk for exposure to traumatic events, and have a potential prevalence of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) due to previous and repeated trauma exposure.

Intergenerational trauma, or historical trauma, is “the cumulative psychological damage that specific groups of people suffer throughout multiple generations” (Hanser & Gomila, 2015). African Americans, as well as Native Americans, are one of the groups said to suffer from the most historical trauma in the United States, most of it stemming from centuries of slavery and subjugation. This paper seeks to show how slavery has continued to affect black people in the United States, starting with slavery and ending with the present. This paper will look at issues that seem to plague the black community in particular, including higher rates of both incarceration and poverty, as well as continued stereotypical and racial profiling, in an attempt

Prior to the publication of any slave narrative, African Americans had been represented by early historians’ interpretations of their race, culture, and situation along with contemporary authors’ fictionalized depictions. Their persona was often “characterized as infantile, incompetent, and...incapable of achievement” (Hunter-Willis 11) while the actions of slaveholders were justified with the arguments that slavery would maintain a cheap labor force and a guarantee that their suffering did not differ to the toils of the rest of the “struggling world” (Hunter-Willis 12). The emergence of the slave narratives created a new voice that discredited all former allegations of inferiority and produced a new perception of resilience and ingenuity.