“Your generation is so sensitive. You all need to have tougher skin. You wouldn’t be able to survive if you were around when I was growing up”. I hear these points being brought up often when visiting my family home in New York City during the holidays and semester breaks. Older family members pride themselves by comparing the things they have gone through throughout their youth, to the events my generation will not put up with currently. My father’s side of the family is from Washington Heights, NY and my mother’s side of the family is from Brooklyn, NY; there are a great amount of disparities amongst these two communities.
Mental health movements began in the 1960’s, when light was beginning to shed on mental health issues within our society. When my parents were growing up through the 1970s while the movement was young, community members were still turning to unhealthy outlets like drugs, guns, and violence to escape their harsh realities. Now, New York is a city that hosts a plethora of demonstrations with unsatisfied young adults attempting to resolve the issues within their harsh realities rather than trying to escape them. The idea of pushing past mental strain and hurt is normalised within these communities, and is the last priority in most people’s lives. The hardships people go through in their youth, ultimately shape them into the adult they eventually become. The older generation looks at my generation as sensitive and never satisfied, while I look at my generation as persistent and self-aware.
Identifying External Factors That Contribute to Mental Health
Mental health issues and disorders are prevalent factors in marginalized communities. Marginalization is encouraging a group of individuals to feel less respected and less privileged through individual and societal actions and available resources (Kannan, 2018). The topic of mental health is a sensitive subject for anyone to speak on, but it is the external factors within the marginalized communities with Black and LatinX community members that make mental health a crisis. There are countless factors that influence mental health in marginalized communities that are overlooked almost always. These factors could range from abuse and neglect, to experiencing discrimination, to bereavement. The lasting effects these factors have on each individual may be different, but they do all make a negative impact that would normally go untreated.
Not only is the urgent need for mental health support lower in Black and LatinX marginalized communities, but when individuals do take the step to seek help, they are often faced with discouragement. The constant internal battle between validating your own emotions pertaining to mental health, while also simultaneously trying to validate your family’s and community members’ understanding of those emotions is something that many people in these marginalized communities struggle with. It is obvious that the members in our communities who need mental health services the most are the ones getting deprived and have the least support. The main contributing factors to this issue are what we call stigmas. A stigma may be defined as a process involving labeling, separation, stereotype awareness, stereotype endorsement, prejudice, and discrimination in a context in which social, economic, or political power is exercised to the detriment of members of a social group (Hatzenbuehler).
Why is Mental Health Rarely Talked About Amongst Family Members?
Mental health is a stigma that is often synonymous to weakness or femininity amongst ethnic groups. The narrative of people with mental illnesses in these communities is that they are dangerous and have no future, as well as the contrasting argument that any mental problems someone is facing could not be that bad to need to seek help. These misconceptions are what lead people to not want to share their own personal stories, and hold themselves and those around them accountable for seeking the help they need and deserve. Those who believe mental health to be a stigma, are the ones who are more likely to have a mental illness and less likely to get the needed help and treatment. Oftentimes mental health illnesses go untreated until the illness is almost debilitating and can ultimately be a terrible risk to oneself and those surrounding you. A psychiatrist named Dr. Lorenzo, of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Behavioral Health, states, “When a Latino patient does disclose information indicating possible depression, anxiety or another mental health concern, we need to address it immediately. For them to open up, they must really be struggling” (Cleveland Clinic, 2017). This quote helps to understand the severity of lack of communication amongst minority communities.
Studies show that minorities are more likely to experience higher levels of self-stigma compared to the white community (Wong, 2017). Self-stigma, in this instance, is the concept of feeling embarrassed or ashamed of the way that a mental health problem is affecting you. This often leads to people never sharing their internal battles with the people they have interpersonal relationships with, causing a lack of communication around the topic of mental health. The first relationships you experience are those of the ones you create with family members. If at a young age you are taught to not share what is going on within the conversation you have with yourself daily, what makes you think that lesson will not translate into your adult life? That is if you are just focusing on how all of this affects you personally, but what about the rest of the relationships in your life that ultimately get affected by the projections of your mental health as well? Communities that encourage ignorance when conversing on the topic of mental health are ultimately enabling the idea of suffering in silence, something that we have worked so hard to rise up against throughout American history.
How Mental Health Services Enable Mental Illness Stigmas in Marginalized Communities
People from ethnic marginalized groups experience double stigma through external racism in society and internal racism within mental health services. This double stigma adds to the internalized and public stigma of mental illness, causing the act of deterring help-seeking. Factors like inaccessbility to high quality mental health care services, discrimination, culutral stigma, and overall lack of awareness are just some of the contributing elements that enable mental health disparities. It is proven through research studies that minorities are more likely to receive poor quality care when treated compared to whites (McGuire, 2014). This leads to the discouragement of seeking mental health care amongst those affected.
Mental health disparities are not something that is hidden and has no research showing evidence of the phenomenon, it is generally published with no shame. For example, oftentimes when comparing media coverage on horrific crimes done by two different races of people, it is evident that the white suspect is someone who is painted out to be someone with mental health illnesses who needs help. Whereas the suspect of a different race does not get the same narrative, the media may even use their mental health illnesses against them. There is a normalization of the stigma of a minority with mental health illnesses being looked at as a threat because of their condition, compared to a white person being looked at as a victim because of their condition. This affects not only an individual, but a whole society of people.
Mental health encompasses the cognitive well being of a human. From experience, I have come to understand that mental health is looked at as a myth that requires little to no priority in LatinX and Black communities. Especially within the Mental Healthcare system. I believe by conducting research and writing papers, communities could become educated on the topic of mental health and ultimately begin developing a healthy relationship with their own personal mental health.
Bibliography
Cleveland Clinic. Overcoming Mental Health Stigma in the Latino Community. Consult QD –
Neurosciences. 2017.
https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/overcoming-mental-health-stigma-in-the-latino-community/
Hatzenbuehler ML, Phelan JC, Link BG. Stigma as a fundamental cause of population health
inequalities. American Journal of Public Health. 2013;103(5):813–821.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3682466/
Kannan, Dr. Divya. The Psychological Costs of Marginalization. White Swan Foundation. 2018.
https://www.whiteswanfoundation.org/mental-health-matters/society-and-mental-health/the-psychological-costs-of-marginalization
McGuire, Thomas G, and Jeanne Miranda. “New evidence regarding racial and ethnic disparities
in mental health: policy implications.” Health affairs (Project Hope) vol. 27,2 (2008): 393-403. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.27.2.393
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3928067/
Wong, Eunice C et al. “Racial and Ethnic Differences in Mental Illness Stigma and
Discrimination Among Californians Experiencing Mental Health Challenges.” Rand
health quarterly vol. 6,2 6.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5568160/