Traumatizing year leading more U.S. Blacks to therapy

“I think people are starting to see therapy for exactly what it’s always been, which is more of an insight, building, more of an opportunity to see things in a different perspective, reframing. It’s something that everyone could benefit from, not just people who may be diagnosed with a severe persistent mental illness.”

—Douglas Lewis Jr., clinical and forensic psychologist

In the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, mental health experts across the country say they have seen Black Americans, whose skepticism of therapy has been documented by research, seeking it in growing numbers.

Demand for therapy had “gone through the roof” over the past year at Creative Kuponya, a mental health practice located just minutes where Floyd was killed, founders Jamil and Sara Stamschror-Lott said. The couple said 31% of their practice’s clients are Black and some residents were overwhelmed and exhausted by the events of the past year and there remained a “great deal of pain and trauma.”

“We’ve seen everything that the nation has seen from afar, from folks in civil unrest and devastation, despair,” said Jamil Stamschror-Lott, who is Black.

Researchers have often found a hesitancy toward therapy among Black people. A 2013 study found that they were not very open to acknowledging psychological problems and were concerned about stigma, especially Black men.

In 2007, researchers called the underuse of mental health services among Black people a “serious concern.” That skepticism is part of a broader mistrust of the medical establishment by Black people, whose illnesses are more often misdiagnosed compared with other groups, researchers said.

Historically, groups of Black people have been exploited by the federal government for medical studies. Black patients also tend to receive lower-quality health services, including for cancer, HIV, prenatal care and preventive care, according to research.

However, there are signs of changing cultural attitudes toward seeking mental health treatment.

Douglas Lewis Jr., a clinical and forensic psychologist in Decatur, Ga., said he was seeing more Black people willing to seek therapy now than in the past.

“I think people are starting to see therapy for exactly what it’s always been, which is more of an insight, building, more of an opportunity to see things in a different perspective, reframing,” Lewis said. “It’s something that everyone could benefit from, not just people who may be diagnosed with a severe persistent mental illness.”

Lewis said some Black people were experiencing a form of “shared trauma” as a result of the news media’s coverage of the Floyd case and other high-profile police shootings, sometimes resulting in increased anxiety or nervousness.

“We’re being inundated with these things repeatedly,” he said, “and what I think increases and compounds these issues is that Black Americans in the United States already experience difficulties that seem to be linked to race already in their daily lives.”

Racism, economics and parenthood are sometimes topics of discussion for Str8 Mental, a virtual group that provides a space for Black men nationwide to discuss issues affecting their lives, said Brad Edwards, the community organizer for Dear Fathers, a platform that tells stories of Black fatherhood.

Str8 Mental meets monthly, and sessions, which allow at least 30 participants, are led by two Black male therapists.

“Oftentimes as Black men, because we have not been taught to open up and discuss what we’re dealing with, we often think we’re dealing with those things alone,” said Edwards, who is Black. “These guys are really forming bonds. It’s purely strangers coming together, being an open, vulnerable safe space and pouring into each other.”

Edwards said Str8 Mental started nearly a year ago and was born out of the effects the pandemic has had on the Black community.

“We created this just to have an opportunity for guys to come and start to unpack,” he said. “I think that the talks around therapy and therapists has started to become more and more common in the Black community” over the past couple of years.

At least 700 men have participated, he said.