The Role Of Mental Health In Black Culture

When one considers the term “civilization”, a term that usually does not come to mind is “psyche”. These two terms seem to have nothing in common with each other, however, that is only if you think about trying to find similarities in them. What you are not doing is considering how they relate to each other. In this paper, I will be going through how civilization, or more specifically, society, affected the development of the black man’s psyche. The journey I will take you on will hopefully shed light on what civilization is, and how the development of a civilization can have adverse effects on the very people who live in the civilization.

Culture is such a broad and complex term that can be defined in numerous ways. It is said that in part is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, communication, belief, art, literature, and music one acquires upon learning and transmitting characteristics from previous generations. Culture is symbolic communication, and its symbols are learned and carefully perpetuated in a society through its institutions. In Black Culture and Black Consciousness by Lawrence W. Levine, he carefully attempts to uncover Afro-American culture during the antebellum and postbellum periods. More often than none, historians like to emphasize the things that get lost in the culture of Afro-Americans when they are taken from Africa and forced to live as enslaved people in North America. However, in Levine’s book, we discover that he carefully

Mental illness is and has always been a serious topic. But it has not always been taken as serious in the black community. From my research, scholars and medical professionals in the field of mental health spoke on the fact that mental illness is a stigma in the black community and the conversation of this is not happening. There are many factors that contributed to this. Factors such as the distrust of medical professionals, mis-diagnosis, socio-economical factors and so much more contribute to the reason the black community is missed when it comes to mental health. I also discovered the inside factors that were culture, religion, mis-education, and family reliance. This also becomes why it is a stigma or why it’s not talked about amongst everyone in the community.

A survey was conducted by Sherrill L. Sellers (Miami University of Ohio), Harold W. Neighbors, (University of Michigan), and Vence L. Bonham (Michigan State University) in order to address the interaction between goal-oriented stress and overall well being in 399 college-educated African American associated with a historically black national fraternal organization all over the world. Mental health of African American male populations is poorly understood due to unique social, racial, and psychological variables. Although many black men deem success possible, a great number identify resistance to success in the form of prejudice, discrimination, and minimal opportunities in comparison with their white counterpart.

For Black people, race is a never-ending conscious component of life in America. We live in a country with a history of slavery that, once ended, extended into an institution and system of laws; Jim Crow, that continue to keep members of the Black community “othered” and invisible. The threefold purpose of this writing is to discuss how the treatment of African-American patients engaging in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy - as they exist today - fails to meet their full potential in the healing of the Black psyche; and to consider how the training curriculum can be expanded to include writings of Black psychoanalysts; and to encourage the analytic community to be opened up to include more analysts of

Health care for mental illness is an issue in the African American community for Men, Women and Adolescents due to the underserving and lack of mental healthcare providers, the cultural stigma of having mental illness and

The Unites States is a true melting pot of ethnicities and cultures. For many members of minority groups a certain hybridity is readily adopted, but for others, cultural assimilation can be quite difficult. Chicana author, Sandra Cisneros described this phenomenon as “always straddling two countries… but not belonging to either culture” (Doyle. 54). African American author, Alice Walker shared Cisneros’ sentiment, but focused her attention on the assimilation of black cultures and subcultures within the United States. Cisneros and Walker make the same poignant statement about the strains of cultural assimilation, with reconciliation of split identities as the goal, in their respective works, 1991’s “Woman Hollering Creek,” and 1973’s “Everyday Use,” yet their unique ethnic perspectives allow them to make it in surprisingly different ways.

Racism against African Americans and other ethnicities is still prevalent in our society. Salis (2015) mentions a recent poll of Caucasian and African Americans and found that sixty percent of those surveyed felt racial relationships ha vent improved and forty percent felt they were worse. In this paper, I will identify how a counselor can reduce the effects of racism and discrimination that has affected African Americans. Additionally, I will address what role a counselor plays in reducing the stigma of mental illness within the African American community. Furthermore, I will highlight the legal and ethical issues identified in the video

When experiencing a mental illness, African Americans face obstacles “related to understanding the problem or situation and limitation in awareness of possible solutions, strategies remedies and resources” (Hines-Martin, Malone, Kim, & Brown-Piper, 2003). In a study by Hines-Martin (2003), participants verbalized that they did not think they were “crazy” and therefore did not need mental health services. In this instance participants showed a lack of knowledge about what mental health illness looks like. They identified mental illness as dichotomous states (Hines-Martin et al., 2003). A study by Mental Health America found similar results. In this study, a majority of African Americans surveyed believed that depression was a “health problem” and in some cases “normal” (MHA, 2012). Talking about mental illness is taboo for African Americans, and as a result they possess little knowledge about specific mental health problems or available treatments (Alvidrez et al., 2008). For African Americans, stigma serves as an impediment to problem recognition. Because they have a misconstrued idea of what mental illness is, they are less likely to contemplate that they have such problems. Alvidrez (2008) found that stigma prevented 65% of their survey respondents from contemplating that they had such problems. Because many African Americans are uninformed about what mental illness is and how it

Conversations regarding mental health can often be a difficult topic to discuss openly. The Huffington Post provided readers with the opportunity to understand mental illness and intersectionality in the article, 4 Black Women Writers Get Honest About Mental Illness and Race. This article provides a different perspective on mental health as it looks at mental illness through the intersectionality of race and gender. In the article, four black women participate in an interview to discuss their experience with depression, bi-polar disorder, and ADHD and how it affects their lives as both black and woman identified beings. Discussions of mental health in the black community are rare as there is a negative view of mental illness. Hearing

What is Black Culture? How would you define it? I would define it as Oppression, Strength, Courage. When I say black culture, I meanly think about what its likes for a person of color in America, what its likes to know you may not get the justice you deserve, and to always be in fear that your voice or life won’t matter to someone who has the power to change that. Our race has been suppressed for centuries and it’s about time we stood mighty for who we are and what we have achieved in a system that only wants us to fail.

To begin with, in the African American culture it was unheard of to go see a therapist or counselor, when problems or issues arise beyond one's control. Not to mention, the embarrassment and disgrace to the family if someone in the family had a substance abuse problem. Nevertheless, the elders always went to church and confided in the pastor and prayer for answers and healing.

A little something about me I don't think fit into the stereotypical idea of “black culture “. Growing up I always had an open mind to everything. When it comes to music fashion food anything that makes the person that I am. And being the second oldest child out of seven I learned to be different because my younger siblings are looking up to me. Especially because I'm the only one who graduated from high school.

The Black culture is deeply rooted in religion and spirituality as our foundation. In addition, our values, customs, traditions, and way of life speak to the meaning of Black culture. It is a culture I take much pride in. Often my culture is referred to as African -American or Black-American culture. The Black culture is a culture of family, resilience, strength, forgiveness, adaptability, and complexities. Like most cultures, the Black culture is also flawed. The culture also reflects multitudes of contributions to American culture. What is important to understand about Black Culture is that is it also multicultural.

Over the course of human history, social clash has occurred as a result of many different factors which commonly encompasses the identity of the involved groups. The concept of group warfare is as old as mankind itself and has been a proven staple to the existence of structured society on Earth. As identity has remained a common component to group conflict on both macro and micro levels, post-modern society has made it apparent that social harmony can truly be achieved through breaking down preconceived prejudices, and looking forward to sharing identity in the form of sacred values. Atrocities on behalf of diversity intolerance have occurred in devastating forms as recently as the Nazi infiltration of the Jewish communities during the World