Racism can affect mental health in Black community
As protesters across North America demonstrated against police brutality toward Black people in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, three Toronto mental health workers were worrying about the effect of these experiences on the Black community.
Having worked in the mental health and social services field for many years, Melissa Taylor, Susan Bascillo and Yemi Otukoya are familiar with issues affecting Black communities when it comes to accessing mental health services. In addition to a lack of adequate resources to offer culturally competent services, people in Black communities also often face stigma and judgment for seeking treatment for mental illnesses, say the three, who are all members of the Healing Collective therapeutic business on the Danforth.
Black Mental Health Matters, an initiative the three professionals have launched, aims to equip local communities with the tools to address the realities that Black Canadians face due to systemic racism. In just over a week, the effort has raised more than $150,000, which they plan to use to provide free and low-cost services to Afro-Indigenous and Black individuals across the province who need mental health support.
The three professionals say the continued effects of racism, going back centuries, contribute to increased levels of anxiety, PTSD, depression and other possible mental health issues among the Black population, the group says.
As it’s been documented over the years, it can be scary for members of the Black community to constantly be hypervigilant and keep looking over their shoulders, worrying about unprovoked violence, especially by police.
Taylor said two issues she has observed in the profession are overmedication and non-treatment. Too often, medication is used as a means of restraint or control when a Black person expresses anger or grief, she said.
“Black individuals are often undertreated in mental-health institutions because practitioners are not asking the right questions or interpret fear or cognitive dissonance as noncompliance,” she said.
“mental-health assessment tools are often developed and tested by non-Black practitioners and used on Black bodies, resulting in inconsistent results. I would like practitioners to ask about the impact of antiBlack racism rather than treating mistrust as paranoia.”
Bascillo also noted the glaring lack of mental-health services that take into account the cultural backgrounds of Black clients. She said that too often age, ethnic identity, traditional values and behaviours are not included in the general plans for mental-health care.
Access to care is also hindered by the scarcity of Black mentalhealth therapists across the province, as well as the fact that the services remain largely unaffordable for many members of the Black communities.
The group plans to use funds from this effort to provide therapy sessions and primary mental-health care to Black people in need. They will also run workshops in the community to talk about issues like ancestral memory of trauma and post-traumatic slave syndrome, as well as run anti-oppressive workshops for mentalhealth practitioners.
There will also be some ongoing training for non-Black practitioners across Ontario to help them work with Black communities. Most of these sessions will be run virtually, at least as long as physical distancing measures against COVID-19 continue to be in place.