Black Mental Health Matters
I have started the conversation about Black mental health and I will continue the conversation for as long as I need to.
Black mental health matters. Black mental health is important and it must be addressed. Being Black impacts a person’s mental health in big ways. Significant historical patterns and systematic processes trickle down into our mental health.
Mental health is defined as “a state of well-being in which an individual recognizes one’s own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to the community” (WHO, 2004). This definition implies that well-being goes beyond the absence of a mental illness. Good mental health allows one to fulfil several key life functions and activities, including, fundamentally, the ability to enjoy life, while also dealing with its inherent challenges and problems.*
As a Social Worker and Psychotherapist, I have seen how Black mental health issues affect an individual’s entire experience as a human being and should be taken seriously. As children, it can affect us in the areas of academics, social functioning, self-esteem, and behavioural problems. During teen years, it can affect these same areas but adds the tendency to self-medicate, engage in risky behaviour, and make bad choices that could lead to criminality, health problems, relational pitfalls, and more. As an adult, mental health issues have the capacity to render an individual dysfunctional in areas of work, relationships, and self-care.
Black mental health matters. Here are 4 ways we can stand up and advocate for Black mental health now:
Talk about Black mental health
At the tail end of 2019, I was in talks with a community leader about delivering a seminar for a Black community. As we were discussing possibilities of a topic, I suggested talking about anxiety. The head of the organization said, “Black people don’t talk about anxiety so we need to choose something else.” I ended up talking about parenting.
Now, mid 2021, all Black people are talking about anxiety (and depression) because we are all collectively experiencing it.
There’s a hidden narrative that we, as Black people, don’t talk about “that stuff” in our community.
The truth of the matter is, it’s not because we think it’s above us, it’s because we have major hangups about mental health. Talking about mental health means that we need to unfold our history and the decades of repressed trauma that we have been carrying. It means we will need to come face-to-face with the reality that Black people have had to struggle for hundreds of years.
“Suck it up and move on.”
“Suck it up buttercup, keep it moving, the children gotta eat.”
This has been the survival pattern for many Black people. We have never had the time to sit down and think, “oh, I feel depressed” or “oh, I feel anxious.” Black people have been busy surviving. They’ve been too busy with 2-3 jobs, taking care of children, paying rent, hustling to the bus stop, doing the do, to sit down and think about how they were feeling.
Because we’ve had to suck it up all these years, because we’ve had to swallow our physical and emotional pain and keep going, it seems as though society believes we don’t feel. It seems as though we don’t cry. It seems as though we don’t feel anxious because we just look so strong. The truth of the matter is, it’s not that we're always strong, it’s that we have never been given the luxury of sitting in our feelings and going, “what is actually happening here right now?” we’ve never had the luxury of taking a deep breath, of taking a break in the middle of our day and going for a walk. We’ve never had the luxury of doing that.
Our emotional and physical pain is not as important.
When I was a little girl (and my peers were little children), when we would tell our parents we felt a certain way, they’d say “deal with it, let’s keep going.” That’s because that's what they had to do when they were coming up. They just had to deal with it.
Well, now we’re calling no more on that. Now we’re saying: We feel. We cry. We get anxious. We worry. We get stressed out. We get burnt out. And we are going to deal with it and the rest of ya’ll will have to deal with it as well.
Change how Black people’s story is told
How our story (history) is told, is impacting Black people’s mental health. Black history isn’t taught in North American schools or in our textbooks. We have to start reclaiming our history and we need to talk about Black stories BEFORE slavery.
Jamaican dub poet Mutabaruka says: Slavery is not African history. Slavery interrupted African history.
We have to teach the “before.” We are starting to reclaim a little bit of our history in our vernacular (“yess queen”, “the king”) and we need to continue that by speaking to each other in ways that are uplifting and celebratory. We, as parents, need to talk to our children and tell them who they really are before the world tells them who they should be. Black people weren’t slaves. They were stolen and made into slaves.
Bee Quammie (writer, speaker, and radio host) doesn’t talk about “slaves” when she gives speeches at schools. Rather, she talks about “enslaved people.” The word change may seem small. One may think that it’s just a phrase, but discourse matters. The way we talk about ourselves, changes how we feel about ourselves.
This also includes society’s narrative that dictates Black people’s potential in life. We are more than slavery, poverty, or incarceration.
When Kobe Bryant died tragically last year, I had a really difficult time with that. After a few days, I had to sit with myself and figure out why that was so difficult for me. When I sat and I really listened to myself, what came up for me was that I was feeling an immense loss from seeing another Black man be cut down in his prime. Through the magic of television, I had watched Kobe become a man, I watched him become excellent at his craft, I watched him have children and take care of his family, I watched him happily retire. I was looking forward to him passing on the baton to the younger Black males behind him. He was a Black man who made it. Only to die, at a relatively young age. It was so tragic for me to see a black man work really hard, become successful, and then it was over… We have to consume a lot of that. It’s harmful to watch these images of successful Black people, people who have finally made it and are breaking the patterns for Black people, on our TVs on our news stations being taken from us too soon. I felt the same way when Chadwick Boseman died. I was heartbroken again because here was another man that represented Black excellence and he was just gone. Taken from us.
Stories of Black people making it in our world and stories of Black people being cut from our lives all have an impact on our mental health. We need to start telling more stories of Black excellence and celebrating our stories, from our perspectives. We need to tell our own stories and stop allowing other people to tell them.
Black people have to get involved
The system needs to be reversed for the improvement of black mental health. That means, we have to get political.
Former MP Celina Caesar-Chevanne shared on her Instagram page how engaging in politics is not just at the ballot box. You can be political by protesting, lobbying MPs (members of parliament), joining organizations that are pushing the agenda, connecting with our networks, calling local TV stations and asking why they have no Black experts, or submitting articles to the newspapers for editorial pieces. We have to speak up, get loud, and refuse to be silent.
We have to be change agents. We have to get involved. We cannot and should not just sit by and wait for the system to change because the system wasn’t built by us or for us and it will not change organically. Important historical changes didn’t occur because people sat down and said: “oh well, let’s wait until it happens.”
They happened because people took matters into their own hands.
So, whether that’s running for public office (I’m thankful for all of the Black individuals in this country who have run for public office and have paved the way for more people to do so), getting involved in community organizations, or attending town hall meetings - show up with Black excellence and with a sense of authority. Show up. Be informed. Have your voice heard.
Get political. We all need to be voting, but don’t just stop there. Do a little bit more than that.
Improve the system for Black mental health
Another thing that knocks us down and harms our mental health is how we have to live in North America. We are always having to look over our shoulders. Wondering what’s going to be the next thing. We have to listen to people speaking poorly of us. We have to talk to our children and prepare them for how they have to behave just in case they have an encounter with the police.
That’s demoralizing.
I heard someone say the other day that it’s like we’re walking around with an invisible backpack full of bricks. We’re carrying a weight that other people don’t have to carry in our country. That immensely impacts our mental health.
When we seek mental health support(s), it’s hard to find clinicians that can work with us. I’m not saying that a white therapist cannot be a good therapist for us; they can. But if a Black individual has to explain to the white therapist what’s happening, then it’s not making the situation any better and the Black individual cannot heal properly. I am all for “cultural competence” (although I don’t really like the term) which is the knowledge a person holds of other cultures. But, if a white therapist is supporting a Black individual’s healing, they need to be educated about the historical and present-day struggles of Black people. They need to be learning from the Black thinkers and leaders in the mental health space.
We also don’t have safe spaces to talk about Black mental health. I was in a meeting on Zoom recently with a group of Black therapists. I turned on my screen and there were all these beautiful dark brown faces and we were all just talking about the community and mental health and while I was listening to everyone just talk…. my heart felt so warm.
How many times do we walk into a room and we’re the only Black person? That chips away at you a little bit at a time. We need to get involved to ensure that the generation coming up after us are not the only Black people in the room. We need to start to push against the doors. We need to start demanding more seats at the table. All of these things are happening and I'm so glad. I’m so glad we are paying attention to ourselves, we are beginning to realize that Black people hurt, feel, cry, get anxious, get depressed, get stressed out, and it’s all worthy of recognition. We are all worthy of having these feelings, we are all worthy of being held and being supported.
These feelings can start in the classroom. I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I’m talking to the school board where my kids go to and asking them what they’re doing about ensuring more Black teachers are in the school. I am not letting up. They’re talking to me about the union and the teachers coming up and all that stuff… I say, okay, get it going!
My children, and your children, need to have positive representation because children cannot be what they cannot see. Representation gives them permission. It says hey, you can do that. That’s why grown folks were crying when Barack Obama became president. It’s why they cried again when Kamala Harris became VP.
A coach/mentor/ of mine, posted on her social media that during the inauguration when Kamala Harris was taking her oath, she held her breath because she was so worried that some lunatic would come and cut her down. That is not something that white individuals live with.
When you have to live with this state of *GASP* what’s going to happen next? That’s anxiety that’s chipping away at you.
It doesn’t need to be our story anymore. We can make the changes for the improvement of Black mental health because Black Mental Health Matters.
*https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-strengthening-our-response
