Visit almost inner city you find them. Service recipients. As we know, the United States of America is a service economy with high paid service providers (doctors/lawyers) and low paid service providers (fast food worker) economy. No one is immune to receiving services paid or unpaid. Across class in the African American diaspora, many in the lower classes receive mental counseling.

If you need mental health counseling or mental health medications, can you find an African American therapist and psychiatrist? Did you know psychiatric medications do not work the same for blacks and whites because of biological composition?

For Black American’s mental health matters.

According the United States Office of Minority Health’s website, “poverty level affects mental health status. African Americans living below the poverty level, as compared to those over twice the poverty level, are 3 times more likely to report psychological distress.”

For 2010, U.S. Minority Health’s website goes on to say, in referencing socioeconomic standards; that in relation to one hundred percent of the black population, 10% of blacks will feel “everything is an effort.” In stark contrast, whites will feel “everything is an effort” in only 6% of the caucasian population.

Undoubtedly, stability is found in financial security that affords so much more than basic necessities. Although, blacks experience racism at every class level. U.S. Bureau of Labor, Economic News Release states, for June 6, 2014 the black unemployment rate is 11.5 percentage points. Mind you this is only the number of black people looking for work as accounted by the U.S. Department of Labor. The overall U.S. unemployment rate is 6.3. These numbers do not include all able bodied black Americans who can work if they had the opportunity.

The number of blacks able to work but unable to find employment is steep. Mass black unemployment coupled with other forms of racism present a mental illness epidemic abounding in the black community.

Violence and incarceration also add to the stressors of black life in America.

Under these circumstances people resort to poor behaviors. Some experience severe depression, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, etc. when the stressors of life topple them. Blacks then, have to seek treatment. Sometimes forced. Sometimes voluntarily. Sometimes involuntarily (prison).

In cities across the U.S., service delivery of mental health treatment occurs in the community health clinic systems that were developed by the federal government in the 1970s to deinstitutionalize large numbers of Americans from mental institutions.

Culturally competency or cultural diversity training is a tool used by mental health providers. These provider community mental health clinics educate staff to practice cultural sensitivity. Cultural sensitivity involves appreciating cultural differences in an effort to provide culturally competent counseling services.

Can cultural diversity training achieve mental health wellness outcomes for black people whose counseling services rendered are provided by caucasian therapists?

Some will say, of course. Assuming the reason here is that mental health is an equal opportunity area of society where racism does not reside. All things being equal; there is institutional racial discrimination in public schools, in the job market, in the justice system, etc. We “must” assume then, that there are gaps concerning caucasian counseling of African Americans experiencing mental illness and drug addiction.

How does one have empathy for another’s travails? Generally, through similar life experience in addition to professional training.

White privilege can prevent caucasion mental health therapist from understanding the effects racism have on black people’s mental wellness.

Famed, African American psychiatrist, Chester Middlebrook Pierce, Emeritus Harvard Medical School, propagated the term, “microagression”. Daily microagressions are those slight racial undertones (comments, glares, subtle mishaps) that blacks experience as daily individuals acts demonstrated by racially challenged caucasians. Repeated assaults of microagressions multiply throughout the day for black people in schools, workplaces, etc. society and can have serious physical and mental health effects.

Before you ask, this article does not subscribe that lack of personal responsibility, use of illegal drugs, and/or biological brain disturbances do leave blacks or anyone for that matter susceptible to mental illness. That not it our topic here.

Effective treatment services provided by black mental health professionals could make the difference in the empathetic qualitative reasoning of the mental health therapy provider with the person needing to heal and recover mentally.

Is this situation any different from the failures of our public schools where the lack of African centered education presents a communication barrier where the curriculum falls apart due to racial indifference that undervalues our children’s African Heritage/African spirituality?

I have received mental health therapy for over eleven years. I have a mood based disorder. I have also worked in the mental health system. I understand both sides as a provider and service recipient.

Often, therapy involves me processing my life with a caucasian women. Generally, she is well dressed, well educated, and somewhat affluent from American suburbia. (Sounds cliché, and stereotypical, yet true). Sometimes there is an elephant in the room during sessions. I never feel comfortable talking about my experiences of racism as a black woman in my city or profession.

I never feel comfortable discussing the trauma I personally experience seeing black children, black women and black men being railroaded and attacked in the media. Or, the problems in my community.

My experiences as a black woman in America past and present do not get validated during therapy. I’ve often felt worse than when I went in to the counseling session. Then, how can the counseling from caucasians with blacks be effective? Instead, the risk for us is looking like we are complaining about racism is part of a mental disorder.

Let’s not get it twisted. Lack of personal responsibility, drug abuse, and biological imbalance are precursors to mental illness. For all you conservatives out there. I feel you. Yet, we cannot forget, how much poverty and racism represent significant drivers of mental illness just as extraordinary.

Our people cannot waste time toiling with ineffective counseling. Encourage black youth college bound to enter psychology, social work, mental health counseling, and psychiatry. Even better, build black psychiatry and counseling practices.

A skilled surgeon can repair a broken leg. A skilled emphatic black man or black woman who knows how blackness exists can assist in recovering your mental state.

http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/templates/content.aspx?lvl=3&lvlID=9&ID=6474

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Middlebrook_Pierce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microaggression

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