Centuries of Racism Have Created a Mental Health Crisis for Black Americans

[My father said with tears in his eyes. It was last month, the day before Father's Day. Instead of making plans to celebrate, my father and I sat together, as many black parents and children do, in grief and fear over the indiscriminate taking of more black lives.

My father told me the story of when he was 16 years old, walking through a neighborhood in Savannah, Georgia, he was pulled over by the police. After being taken into a field and told to "run away," he knelt on the ground with his hands in the air. That didn't stop the police officer from beating him with a baton to "teach him a lesson," but it did give my father an experience that many black boys and men do not experience.

In the past few weeks, we have witnessed a national dialogue about racism against blacks in America like we have never seen before. Coupled with hearing my father recount his own experiences, it has evoked many memories of experiencing violence at the hands of racist people and organizations in my own life. As co-founder and co-CEO of the mental health company Shine, I am rethinking how these experiences have shaped my own relationship with mental health.

I recall many times my first vivid experience of racism: being in my elementary school playground when a tall boy, four years older than me, used my face like a punching bag and repeatedly spat the n-word in my face. I was in first grade. I distinctly remember the sweat dripping from his face while he was beating me. In Warren, Pennsylvania, where I grew up, I moved from one elementary school to another in three different elementary schools because the white kids and teachers could not keep their hands off me. One teacher had a bad habit of aggressively grabbing me and verbally humiliating me in front of other children. When my mother reported this to the principal, he told her that she should look for another school.

By the time I was in middle school, the racism I experienced had changed from episodes of physical assault to everyday vicarious racism. My middle school boyfriend's best friend constantly showed him videos of black pornography and asked how he could find me attractive. Every Thursday in gym class, I spent suspicious hours in the nurse's office to avoid the racist boys. Years later, a white classmate in college wrote an essay about "Ebonics" using Wikipedia as a source, which she described as "the irony of how black people fought for education, and now they don't even use it."

As I entered the workforce, the racism I experienced became more veiled. Statements such as "I wanted authenticity, not ghettos," "I felt like you were too aggressive in that meeting," "Why are all the black girls hanging out together?" and "I hope this is not an us vs. them thing," were all statements of my experience in corporate America. ring in my head when I think back on them.

My experience, with all my privileges as a light-skinned, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual woman, is a fraction of what many black children and adults in America experience every day, and it is strikingly reflected in our collective mental health status. For hundreds of years, this compounded systemic racism and generational trauma has wreaked havoc on the well-being of black people.

Not only are black Americans 20% more likely than whites to suffer from severe psychological distress (open in new tab), but studies have shown that they are also more likely to experience feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, depression in blacks (open in new tab) is more disabling, persistent, and resistant to treatment than that experienced by whites. In addition, Blacks are more likely to be victims of violent crimes and therefore more likely to experience PTSD (open in new tab). Black women, in particular, are far more likely to be sexually assaulted than any other group (open in new tab). I hope this is well understood.

Black people even have our own mental health disorders. Studies have shown that chronic experiences of racism and microaggressions can cause "race war fatigue" (open in new tab), which includes anxiety, worry, irritability, headaches, increased heart rate and blood pressure, and other physical and psychological symptoms. This is in addition to the physiological effects of sharing the same cells as our ancestors who were beaten, tortured, raped, and enslaved for hundreds of years.

Blacks are severely handicapped when it comes to the treatment of mental illness. (Opens in new tab) Data show that racial minorities who develop problematic behavior as children are more likely to be sent to juvenile detention centers rather than receive the care they need. Blacks are not supported for mental health issues at a young age, and when we do seek help, it is difficult to find health care providers who understand us, trust us, and empathize with our experiences. As with physical health care in the Black community, we see health provider bias, lack of cultural competence, and socioeconomic barriers to mental health care; in 2018, only 4% of American Psychological Association members were Black (opens in new tab). All of this together may help us understand why only 30% of Blacks with mental illness receive treatment each year (opens in new tab). (opens in new tab) I started Shine because I was fed up with this lack of representation and inclusion in "wellness." Having stepped on racist landmines throughout my childhood and my corporate career, the media told me that to feel better, I needed to lose a little more weight, become whiter and richer, take advantage of $5,000 silent retreats, watch videos of Tony Robbins yelling at his followers, and It seemed to me that he was saying that mental health would improve.

It didn't work for me. Nor my friends or family. Not for my co-founder, Naomi Hirabayashi, who is Japanese American. We were sick of hearing from companies that pretended that mental and emotional health was some great equalizer. [Over 80% of our team is people of color, and of the nearly 1,000 meditations in our app, 90% are created and voiced by black women. Our content addresses specific issues such as Black mental health, LGBTQ+ mental health, women's mental health, and the intersection of all these identities. Our community is impacted by the fact that Black women are twice the percentage of the U.S. population.

If we as a society cared about black mental health, we would take a long hard look at both the factors that contribute to poor mental health within the black community and work to make our mental health industry more knowledgeable about those factors. It is critical that Black founders like myself get the support, amplification, and funding we need for our work, but we are only one piece of the puzzle. Without widespread private and public funding of mental health care initiatives for Black Americans, increased support for Black practitioners seeking to enter the mental health field, and deeper, more representative research into the reasons behind the disparities we see, there can be no doubt: We We will still be here 100 years from now.

I am still coming to terms with the impact racism has had on my own mental health. I know that my daily anxiety and the sadness I carry in my body every day are not the result of a culture where these things are simply "too busy" and "too connected". Rather, my mental health struggles are directly tied to my father's experience with the police that day. And to the experiences of my ancestors. Childhood bullying. To a negligent boss. My daily experiences as a black woman in America.

If there is anything we have seen in the past few weeks, it is that we can do more, we can do better, and we can do it now. Being black in America equals death by a thousand cuts. If you believe that black lives matter, I challenge you to believe and fight for black mental health as well.

Marah Lidey is the co-founder and co-CEO of Shine, an app and community created to provide a more comprehensive mental health experience for all.

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