July is recognized as Minority Mental Health Awareness
month. While there have been numerous
articles and critical analyses published in recognition of Minority Mental
Health Awareness month, i.e., the importance of culturally-tailored mental
health treatment, barriers to treatment, the impact of stigma, etc., there is one
topic that warrants but has received very little attention—the effects of
racial trauma on the mental health of ethnic minority communities.
According to Erlanger Turner, assistant professor of
psychology at the University of Houston, “Racial trauma is experiencing
psychological symptoms such as anxiety, hypervigilance to threat, or lack of
hopefulness for your future as a result of repeated exposure to racism or
discrimination” (Rochaun Meadows-FernandezRacial, 2017) Racial trauma is the result of manifold actions perpetrated
against and directed towards ethnic minorities including being ostracized as
the “other,” told to “go back to where you came from,” even when your native
land is America; watching in horror as children who look like your own are
being treated like animals, e.g. housed in iron cages at the border; or
being killed by police while unarmed or posing no clear and present danger or threat,
etc..
I remember vividly visiting the makeshift street memorial
for Mike Brown, which was in the neighborhood and exact location where his body
fell following the fatal police shooting that ended his young life at the age
of 18 on August 9, 2014. Aside from the emotional
distress that I was personally dealing with surrounding that tragic case, there
are two things that are indelibly etched in my memory from that visit to
Ferguson. The first is the heavy and thick grief that filled the air combined
with the hollow stares that pained the faces of many of the community members
who congregated at the memorial. The second
thing I will probably never forget is a statement made by one of the community
members who said “We are now left wondering how to and if we will ever
heal. Everyone is coming here except
mental health experts.”
Mike Brown’s case, as tragic and troubling as it is, is not
unique nor is it unfamiliar to many ethnic minority communities. There is a
long death registry with the names of Black, Hispanic/Latin, Muslim, Asian, and
Native Americans whose communities have felt the devastating blows of racial trauma including unjustifiable
homicide by law enforcement (e.g. Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Stephon Clark,
Keith Lamont, Jonathan Ferrell, Philando Castile, Soheil Majarrad, among many
others); suspicious deaths of loved ones while in police custody (e.g. Sandra
Bland, Jesus Huerta, and LayLeen Polanco); and rogue vigilante violence
perpetrated against us (e.g. Trayvon Martin
and Renisha McBride’s cases).
These traumatic and dehumanizing experiences have often
left, not just individuals and families, but entire communities in perpetual
states of bereavement (communal bereavement), emotional dissonance, and
psychological distress. According to the US DHHS, Office of Minority Health
data (2016), adult Black Americans are 20 percent more likely to
report serious psychological distress than adult whites.
Traumatic events happen in every community; however, it is
the frequency and high visibility of racial trauma inflicted upon ethnic
minority communities that places their mental health at risk of trauma’s
corrosive effects. In some instances, as
the adage goes, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” members of ethnic
minority communities exhibit remarkable resiliency by turning their trauma into
powerful movements, actions or organizations e.g. the Black Lives Matter Movement or The
Lighthouse in Raleigh which was founded by the family of the three beautiful young
Muslims Deah Barakat (age 23), Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha (age 21), and
Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha (age 19) who were gunned down by a white male
motivated by hate and Islamophobia in Chapel Hill NC on February 10, 2015.
As we continue the important discussions, policy creation,
and program development related to behavioral health services, especially for
ethnic minority communities, it is important to understand the consequences of
being targets and victims of racial trauma.
We must consider not just PTSD (post-traumatic stress) but what Dr. Averette
Mhoon Parker once labelled as DOTS (daily ongoing traumatic stressors). As an African American woman who grew up in
the south, my grandmother would always say “If it ain’t one thing it’s
another.” In many ethnic minority communities, racial trauma is ubiquitous and
permeates many aspects of our lived experiences.
The daily ongoing traumatic caused by pervasive and persistent
racial traumas can have a weathering or corrosive effect on the mind and body.
“Geronimus2proposed
the “weathering” hypothesis, which posits that Blacks experience early health
deterioration as a consequence of the cumulative impact of repeated experience
with social or economic adversity and political marginalization. The stress
inherent in living in a race-conscious society that stigmatizes and
disadvantages Blacks may cause disproportionate physiological deterioration,
such that a Black individual may show the morbidity and mortality typical of a
White individual who is significantly older.”
Geronimus, Hicken, Keene and Bound (2006)
Let’s make a commitment to work together across communities
and the artificial lines that divide us-- race/ethnicity, gender or sex
identities, socioeconomic status—to create solutions to the drivers of racial trauma. And in our quest, let us not be afraid to
“call a thing a thing,” not to demonize any one group e.g. police but to
validate and begin the recovery and healing process from the pain and suffering
that many ethnic minority communities are experiencing as a result of racial
trauma. And, even though a common
response to victims of racial trauma is to deny the harm or declare that –“it’s
in your heads,” understand that very well may be true, but not in the fictitious
made-up way that dismissive statement infers.
