It’s safe to say that in America and other western countries, Black men’s mental health is severely challenged by racism. Most police brutality is directed towards Black men, in fact, according to statistics, 1 in 1000 Black men can expect to be killed by the police. Most people may also make the assumption that Black men have no need for expressing their feelings even more so than White men considering the stereotyping of Black men as dangerous criminals, since dangerous criminals don’t have feelings, right? Black men are also less likely to use mental health services compared to non-Hispanic White men. One factor that influences this is that when Black men seek mental health, they try to find a psychologist of the same race, as they are more likely to give better advice on issues that only Black people face. The problem with this preference of theirs is that only around 4% of the psychology workforce consists of Black people, making it hard for them to find someone who fits their needs. It’s also worth noting that structural racism and the history of Black men in the United States, the way people treat their mental health is heavily affected by biases by medical providers as well as high poverty rates which will affect their ability to afford mental health services. These factors can make Black men distrustful towards mental health systems which only encourages them to not seek help.
In addition to these humbling statistics, the dwindling mental health of young Black men can find its sources to societal factors. African Americans rank 2nd as the group most affected my mental health complications, beaten only by Hispanics. In North America, simply being a part of the African American community means that you are at an increased risk of being prone to anxiety and depression. This is widely attributed to the lack of resources attributed to Black communities for this field, as well as severe distrust of the healthcare system in these communities due to a history of mistreatment, prejudice, and straight up abuse by Western governments towards their Black communities. The first hurdle that this group faces is identified by Thomas A. Vance, PhD and Research Fellow at the Gender Identity Program of ColumbiaU. He deems that the first factor contributing to the staggering numbers seen in the Black community is that of systematic barriers. What is meant by this is that African Americans are disproportionately represented in the less favoured groups of society, being 40% of the homeless, nearly half the prison population and also about half of all children in the foster care system despite being only 13% of the population of the United States. These groups which already carry negative stigma are academically deemed to be “high risk populations” in the mental health domain as they are all determining factors in the development of mental health issues going forward in life. Moreover, young Black men are unlikely to seek help for their mental health concerns because of the stigma associated with it by their own peers. The dominating perception of mental health is overwhelmingly negative in this group, as a study surfaced showing that about 60% of young African Americans deem signs of depression and anxiety as “signs of weakness”. These sorts of ideas go further to perpetuate disparaging stereotypes associated with this community.
This will be our final blog post concerning a specific issue. Next week we will probably make a concluding post, but it won’t be as long. I’d like to share some survey results with you. Most of them did not work, as we cannot correlate certain answers with each other. However, we did see that most people answered that a higher amount of girls spoke up to the participants about their mental health issues than boys. We also saw that around a quarter of participants did not have a good relationship with their father, and that around 20% of participants did not believe that men face any social injustices.
Have a good week!
