Category Archives: Racism/Diversity

Mind Health, Racism/Diversity

Painting Insanity Black

This article is from the Black Health Network:

Painting Insanity Black

By Annie Murphy Paul

It took only a few weeks on the job for William Lawson to notice that there was something very strange going on. The psychiatrist had just joined the staff of the John L. McClellan Veterans Hospital in North Little Rock, Ark., and already he had seen patient after patient — dozens of them, as it turned out — with the same ill-fitting diagnosis. All African-American men, all veterans of combat in the Vietnam War, they suffered from terrifying nightmares, gut-twisting anxiety,
flashbacks of fighting — classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet they’d been assigned a very different condition: schizophrenia.

Lawson immediately took the men off the anti-psychotic medication they’d been prescribed, replacing it with the psychotherapy and antidepressants that have proven effective in relieving PTSD. Under the new treatment regime, most of the patients made a quick recovery. Mistakes like the ones he discovered may be odd, but they’re far from uncommon, says Lawson, now a professor at Indiana University and the co-editor of Cross-Cultural Psychiatry (Wiley, 1999).

Studies going back to the 1960s show that African-Americans are significantly more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than whites, a discrepancy due at least in part to clinician error. The rates of such mislabeling vary with the type of facility –they’re much lower, for example, in hospitals affiliated with universities — but Lawson estimates that in overburdened community mental-health centers, as many as 30 percent of black patients diagnosed with schizophrenia actually have some other illness.

Racism/Diversity

You’re not an American Idol?

bl world in girl handswebWhat?! You’re not an American Idol, A Real Housewife of Atlanta,  America’s Top Model or A Swan? You feel like The Biggest Loser because you don’t Think You Can Dance, be Flavor Flav’s eighth baby-mama, or be chosen as The Bachelorette to marry someone you barely know?  And you didn’t rack up a perfect score on your SATs?

Well, that means you’re A Survivor of one of the most disgusting trends ever seen in cultural shaping that seems bent on taking the place of God and Universal Spirit in determining human worth. Might this be a way to eliminate competition – sort of along the lines of Cinderella’s step-sisters?

As therapists, we are ever confident that with luck, our training and God’s help, we’ll convince you that you indeed all came to the planet with the Light with which all souls are ignited.

Every one of us of every color, size, shape, nationality & income level has a number of special qualities, talents and gifts. Every one of us has a few flaws. No one can take any of these normal components of life away from you. It is your task in life to passionately celebrate and share your gifts and gently work on reducing your flaws. It is no other human being’s right to decide that you are not good enough. Notice that what one person doesn’t like, someone else loves.

The key, maybe, is to utilize your gifts where they will be appreciated.  Understand and be clear about who you are and don’t be talked out of what you do well. If no one else pats you on the back, make sure you do it for yourself and you’ll notice The Universe creating opportunity for you.

Lifestyle, Racism/Diversity

How does urban removal affect our families?

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When I go “home” to the city of my birth, I go to the corner where I used to play ball and there is little recognizable. Not even a tree that I used to play under or a shrub that we hid  behind those summer nights we played hide and seek. That is probably true for many of you.

Photo by Legacy Cities Design
Photo by Legacy Cities Design

In nearly every major city I have visited in the last few years, the “old” neighborhoods are becoming “new”. The new South Side. The new “Bronzeville”. (What do they call it?”) The new Atlanta. The New Newark. Coming eventually: The New Detroit. The lovely new names they give to streets that resemble wore torn Iraq but hold our most cherished memories.  The close, warm connections with neighbors & family broken by alcohol, unemployment, crack and then boarded up following the “War on Drugs” that we seem to have lost.  Who knew?

I did. I just didn’t understand how it would occur. I remember as a child hearing that the land our home was on was owned by the university even though the home was owned by my parents.  That after the year 2000, the land would go back to the university. Well that was inconceivable to me because, after all, the world was supposed to end in 1984. But don’t you know, that seems to be exactly what’s taking place in major cities all over the country. Whenever I take the train passing Baltimore, I see row upon row of houses, boarded up. Factory buildings for blocks, empty, their metal fittings rusted and I wonder to myself, “How did they get all of those people to leave, all at the same time? How do you get whole neighborhoods to vanish?

Of course, it’s the blacks that leave and the whites who move in. The buildings are cheap but they have pretty surfaces: granite kitchen counters and stainless steel refrigerators. They are cheaply built but they have big price tags- too big for the folks from the old neighborhood, many of whom were retired & struggling to pay the rising property taxes. Gentrification seems to mean “Give the younger generation of whites the homes, the land that your memories were made on”. Probably to local government it means new taxes, new income for new businesses, new mortgages for old banks.

Dr. Mindy Fullilove, Social Psychiatrist. Picture:YouTube
Dr. Mindy Fullilove, Social Psychiatrist. Picture:YouTube

To us it means, the destruction of our social networks and our families. To therapists and other healers it means an epidemic of invisible losses, a cutting of the fabric that holds us all together.  Watching this phenomenon as well, is social psychiatrist, Mindy Fullilove, a New Jersey native with a keen eye for the effects of the macro environment on the micro-connections between people.  What she has come to understand is something we all need to know. Continued…..

Mind Health, Racism/Diversity

Why We Seek Black Providers

Dr. Veronique Thompson, is a California  psychologist. In an interview published in the ebook, “Cultural Diversity,  A Primer for the Human Services”, she does a more than adequate job of articulating the cumulative and historical forces that accompany clients into the therapy space. In that space, the launching of a successful therapy relationship requires trust, the expectation of acceptance and protection, understanding, and the opportunity to be heard without judgment. That is counter to the everyday experiences for most of us with whites, that is, with our interpretation of our experiences with whites.

We carry our histories into therapy

There are many parties to our interactions in therapy: our assumed acceptance of each other, our personal histories ( or let’s just call it “our baggage”), our body language (a big part of how we blacks communicate), our slang, the topics that are brought up  along with those that are avoided, and that delicate dance we do around sensitivity to the other’s perceived differences. With people who are more like us, there are fewer differences to be dealt with.

The movie, 12 Years a Slave, has made the severity of this history clear. When feelings of discrimination are ignored, they fester and erupt later in the therapy , disguised as some other issue. It is trust and understanding  that comes from knowing that our therapist has travelled the same road we’re on that accelerates the formation of a bond between therapists & clients.

When the therapist doesn’t recognize racism

 How people react to subtle racism is a good example of this. For many whites, it’s not there. It’s been reduced to a meaningless quip in popular media. They (the black who has suffered an invisible  slight) are “playing the race card”.  In a therapy session it is one of a thousand little cuts that needs to be recognized, vented and grieved over. It can make black folks start to feel a little crazy all on its own but with a black therapist, these underlying wounds get treated.

So baring your soul to a stranger is hard enough, and leaves you very vulnerable – to rejection – while baring your soul to a therapist is even harder, because they have the capacity to reject your sanity if they can’t recognize the validity of your underlying pain. Many white therapists, and some blacks, don’t understand that there’s an historical component to this pain. It is that history, if not the genetic impact of racism, that increases the sensitivity to everyday racism. Dr. Thompson addresses the historical aspect of this pain.

How our history may affect diagnosis and understanding

In the interview, Dr. Thompson, a Spelman graduate, states, “If you understood what the process of enslavement did to turn rage directed toward the self – directed toward one’s community as violence – it would give you a different way of understanding. How can one deal with that rage without pathologizing the person, and making their anger the only issue to be addressed? ” This is an important way to decipher the anger that is so often present in black life.  As providers, parents, teachers, police officers, we are shortsighted if we try to approach anger as if it has no roots. It is as ineffective as killing weeds by cutting off the leaves of the plants.

Dr. Thompson goes on to a deeper analysis of some of the emotions with which blacks are unequally burdened. She says rage turns into outrage. She notes that, “When a person is outraged, they’re outraged for a reason and the reason is injustice. So the period of enslavement is important because it shows us where the anger came from and there are a lot of residuals from our history having to do with anger, trust, and suspicion which really should be renamed healthy paranoia.”

Veronique Thompson, PhD. is a listed provider on this site.

Cultural Diversity: A Primer for the Human  Services, Jerry Diller. Cengage Learning, February 9, 2010. A Google eBook.

Lifestyle, Racism/Diversity

Racism May Speed Up Aging in Black Men

University of Maryland researcher, Dr. David H. Chae, completed a study of the effects of racism on African American men. It is already known that African Americans have shorter life spans and increased chances of suffering stress-related illnesses.

Telomeres, DNA sequences that cap the ends of chromosomes, were examined in 92 African American men, ages 30 to 50 years old. The men were questioned about their experiences of being discriminated against. In addition, these men were tested on their own attitudes toward their race. This measure, along with their experiences of being discriminated against, was associated with shorter telomeres. The telomeres are the cells’ way of stimulating the growth of new cells to replace damaged cells in the human body. The shorter the telomeres, the fewer new cells the body makes and the less the body is able to fight off disease and disability.

Photo:Wikipedia
Photo:Wikipedia

The men with fewer experiences of racism had longer telomeres than those with greater experiences of racism. Those men who had positive attitudes toward other blacks (less racial bias), had longer telomeres as well.  Per Dr. Chae, “African American men who have more positive views of their racial group may be buffered from the negative impact of racial discrimination.”

Researchers reported that participants felt discriminated against most frequently by police and at their jobs. They also felt discriminated against by service providers in restaurants and stores. In addition, the study noted that African American men reported being routinely treated with less courtesy and respect and experiencing more “daily hassles” which contribute to their overall experience of racism.

The effect of having negative attitudes about their own race is both intriguing and troubling. One wonders, though, if self-hatred & group self-hatred could be sparked by a sense of helplessness & hopelessness. If one thinks that being black is a characteristic that causes negative treatment would that affect how the body responds to illness? Would a man blame himself if he were targeted for poor treatment? And would he assume that other brothers, particularly younger brothers, deserve their prison sentences, for example, for fairly minor offenses?

While telomere shortening provides biological evidence of the effect of racism and explains the increase in premature death due to dementia, diabetes, stroke and heart disease, Dr. Chae puts it in simple terms. “Racism”, he says, “literally makes people old.” Maybe it also unconcsiously makes them biased toward other blacks.

“Discrimination, Racial Bias, and Telomere Length in African-American Men”,  David H. Chae (University of Maryland, College Park); Amani M. Nuru-Jeter ( University of California, Berkeley); Nancy E. Adler, Jue Lin, Elizabeth H. Blackburn, and Elissa S. Epel ( University of California, San Francisco); and Gene H. Brody (Emory University), American Journal of Preventive Medicine, February, 2014. The study was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging, the University of California, and Emory University.