Black Women's Mental Health

Balancing Strength and Vulnerability

Stephanie Y. Evans, Kanika Bell, Nsenga K. Burton, Stephanie Y. Evans, Kanika Bell, Nsenga K. Burton

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781438465821, 9781438465814
• eBook ISBN: 9781438465838
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book offers a unique, interdisciplinary, and thoughtful look at the challenges and potency of Black women's struggle for inner peace and mental stability. It brings together contributors from psychology, sociology, law, and medicine, as well as the humanities, to discuss issues ranging from stress, sexual assault, healing, self-care, and contemplative practice to health-policy considerations and parenting. Merging theory and practice with personal narratives and public policy, the book develops a new framework for approaching Black women's wellness in order to provide tangible solutions. The collection reflects feminist praxis and defines womanist peace in terms that reject both "superwoman" stereotypes and "victim" caricatures. Also included for health professionals are concrete recommendations for understanding and treating Black women. "…this book speaks not only to Black women but also educates a broader audience of policymakers and therapists about the complex and multilayered realities that we must navigate and the protests we must mount on our journey to find inner peace and optimal health." — from the Foreword by Linda Goler Blount For access to an online resource created by the editors, visit: Black Women's Mental Health @ http://www.bwmentalhealth.net/

PART I

Balancing Vulnerability

Sisters on Sisters

Inner Peace from the Black Woman Mental Health Professional Perspective

KANIKA BELL

… somebody / anybody sing a Black girl’s song, bring her out, to know herself, to know you, but sing her rhythms, carin / struggle / hard times, sing her song of life, she’s been dead so long, closed in silence so long, she doesn’t know the sound of her own voice, her infinite beauty, she’s half-notes scattered, without rhythm / no tune, sing her sighs, sing the song of her possibilities, sing a righteous gospel, … let her be born, let her be born & handled warmly.

—Ntozake Shange

When Ntozake Shange wrote for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow was enuf (1975, 2010), she had attempted suicide four times. Tired of the cycle of pain and shame that was shrouding her life in darkness, she chose a creative way to talk about something that was considered dirty laundry in the African American community: Black women’s mental health. Her tales of depression, anxiety, abuse, and shame were heralded as fiction but were a collective autobiographical account of some of the hidden painful places that exist in the lives of Black women who struggle with mental health challenges.

In her very vulnerable and ultimately transformative book, Black Pain: It Just Looks like We’re not Hurting (2009), Terrie Williams writes about the “coming out” process of African Americans who experience depression and other mental illnesses. She also writes about the power of testimony; that hearing the words of other women experiencing similar struggles can spark a rededication to healing.

The mental health agenda, much like many other social and political agendas, has historically left out the unique perspective of the Black woman (Allen & Britt, 1984). Much information can be found in scholarly and popular literature about the particularities of the psychology of women and even the psychology of the African American. However, the psychology of Black women has been largely ignored (Allen & Britt, 1984). The civil rights movement and its academic offshoot, African American studies, have concentrated mainly on the experiences of Black men. White women have always been the central focus of modern feminist and women’s liberation movements as has their scholarly derivative, women’s studies. In fact, the original development of the feminist platform, and thus the introduction of feminism to the mental health fields illustrates how the plight of the Black woman is decidedly absent (Landrine, 1995). The Black political agenda tends to focus upon police brutality and racial profiling as well as the economic disenfranchisement of Black men. It laso purports slogans that suggest that it is “hard to be a Black man in America” and conceptualizations of the Black man as nearing extinction. African-centered and Black psychology scholars, like their counterparts in the political realm, also tend to focus primarily on the particular marginalization of the Black man and virtually ignore issues that affect Black women’s mental health.

Paradoxically, psychology and other mental health disciplines could actually learn a lot from a group of people who routinely suffer from racism, sexism, and economic disenfranchisement simultaneously, yet persevere and find ways to thrive, or find inner peace. But the literature is still scant regarding the mental health of Black women. Because the default view of the American mental health professional is one of a member of the dominant group, most writings in the literature talk about therapeutic experiences or the opinions of European American members of the psychology community. Very little is presented, even in discussions about Black women’s mental health specifically, from the perspective of the African American female therapist (Kelly & Greene, 2010). The impetus for this study was to add to the discourse a more personal view. This study represents the testimony of those on the front lines, the sisters who treat the sisters, Black women that have dedicated their scholarly inquiry and clinical acumen to finding solutions for this very serious, but ignored problem: the mental health of Black women.

In her metaphor about “coming out” as depressed, Williams (2009) explains how Black people “pass for normal,” allowing others to believe that things are “fine” because that is how they repeatedly respond to “How are you?” It appears that for Black women, not only is there a commitment to passing for normal, there is a desire to pass for excellent. Even “normal” people are expected to have ups and downs, but Black women are often expected to have no periods of pain; the hamster wheel never even slows for them.

Recent media coverage of the tragic suicides of Miss Jessie’s founder Titi Branch and For Brown Girls creator Karyn Washington (Burton, 2016) is starting to dispel the myth that Black women don’t commit suicide and, more significantly, that Black women do not suffer from mental health challenges. However, the discussions about unchecked mental health issues are still necessary to avoid these tragic cases being regarded as stories of women who weren’t “strong enough” to handle life’s challenges. This is an unfortunate characterization of these and other Black women who made this heartbreaking choice, as it further silences the multitudes of women who have thought seriously about finding a desperately permanent solution to what feels like insurmountable torment, those who have wondered what it would be like not to be in pain anymore … not to live … any more.

A major discussion in behavioral medicine/health psychology at large is the impact of mental health on physical health. As Black women continue to top the lists of sufferers from heart disease, high blood pressure, and HIV, the link between mental health and these states of dis-ease still does not receive its proper attention. In addition, some uncomfortably frequent unhealthy habits including overeating (Blue & Berkel, 2010), paranoia in relationships with other women, working too much (Jones & Shorter-Gooden, 2003), and the infamous Black woman “attitude” (Fordham, 1993) are all symptoms of larger fractures in Black women’s mental health.

Finding Peace

“Inner peace” has been popularized colloquially as a state of mental and/or spiritual balance. This place of homeostatic healthiness is regarded as happiness: where peace of mind prevails, where stress is not dominant, and where one knows and loves oneself. Evans (2014) narrows the focus of this concept of inner peace into six dimensions (body, mind, spirit, social, economic, and political), which broadens the extant literature on the topic. Her work addresses what inner peace means specifically for Black women. These dimensions were echoed in this study of Black women mental health scholars and professionals.

The point of this study was to elicit responses from those with expertise on Black women’s mental health about how inner peace is conceptualized by Black women. This pursuit allowed these professionals to speak candidly about the challenges faced by Black women in an effort to develop solutions to the obstacles that often stand in the way of achieving optimal mental health.

Method

Fifty women who identified as Black or African American and who were either mental health practitioners or academic professionals with graduate degrees in the mental health fields were solicited via snowball sampling to participate in this study. They ranged in age from twenty-five to sixty-nine and varied widely in years of experience from as little as two to as many as forty. Twenty-two respondents were psychologists, five were psychiatrists, nine were professional counselors, four were clinical social workers, six were marriage and family therapists, and four identified as pastoral counselors. Approximately 75 percent of the respondents were licensed practitioners who reported providing services to a majority Black female clientele and approximately 40 percent of the sample reported engaging in scholarly research about Black women’s mental health. Approximately 75 percent of the respondents hailed from the southeastern region of the United States, with the largest concentration of these in the state of Georgia, and the remaining 25 percent were spread evenly among the Northeast, West Coast, and Midwest regions, mainly California, the Tri-State area, Washington D.C., and the state of Illinois.

The participants answered open-ended questions about their experiences working with Black female clients and/or research participants. A pool of twenty questions was originally developed but a focus group of six African American female licensed psychologists practicing in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, revealed that the fewer and the less specific the questions, the more diverse and comprehensive the responses. Four base questions emerged. They are listed below:

1.How do you define inner peace or optimal mental health?

2.What are some of the challenges that Black women face specifically, that disrupt their ability to achieve and maintain inner peace?

3.What are the most popular issues that arise in sessions with Black women?

4.What is/are your favorite technique(s) that you suggest to Black female clients to achieve happiness and balance?

The survey questions were administered via an online survey program that keeps the respondent’s name and e-mail address confidential. The participants were not offered any incentive for their participation, yet each provided substantial responses to the survey questions.

Results/Discussion

Following is a discussion of the themes that emerged from their responses.

The Problems: Threats to Black Women’s Mental Health

SEEING PEACE AS A POSSIBILITY

It appears that the first step to achieving inner peace for Black women may be believing that peace is even possible for Black women. A number of participants had trouble themselves even identifying with the concept of true happiness, balance, and mental health. Many Black women see peace as a luxury for White women and as something not allowed for Black women. Responses suggested a number of reasons for this belief. Some Black women reason that because the overall understanding is that mental illness happens only to White women, then the healing modalities available are developed for, and applicable to, White women specifically. As such, achieving mental clarity, happiness, and inner peace is a status reserved for White women. Participants stated that many of their clients had built their identities around the stressors in their lives, describing themselves as “overworked single mother” or “unfulfilled wife” as though those were demographic box choices on the U.S. Census. The attachment to this identity is difficult to disband, making the achievement of inner peace seemingly “impossible.”

Some of those who find peace “possible,” see it as a negative. Peace for some Black women seems to be associated with childhood because of the assumed freedom from responsibilities. Adults don’t have “peace,” not when they are taking care of business. The practitioner respondents suggested that many of their Black female clients viewed the notion of “peace” as immature; a fantasy concept for people who aren’t committed to their families or careers. Black women often simultaneously embrace and hate the notion that “there is always something more to do.” Such that one goes to bed each night never feeling satisfied with what was accomplished that day, and frustrated at not accomplishing more on her seemingly endless to-do list. Those uncomfortable with the very notion of finding peace admit to breaking their children out of the myth of peaceful existence because that “isn’t the real world.” For fear of raising a lazy child, and supporting an omnipresent stereotype, Black women at times attempt to make their children feel guilty for living a carefree existence (Bell, Thomas, & Hayes, 2012), thus continuing the cycle.

The majority of respondents spoke about the tendency to equate peace with happiness. However, for many, happiness is a fleeting, momentary emotion. Happiness, and thus peace, is not conceived as a permanent state of being, just a passing emotion, and often, a calm before the next storm. As too many Black women live crisis-to-crisis, too few have any idea what it would be like to allow themselves to be happy. A large part of the practice of many of the Black female practitioners, including the author of this chapter, is teaching Black women how to celebrate themselves. Clients’ goals are often so large and so long term, they never feel accomplished in the immediate.

Akin to the acceptance that peace is possible is the notion of whether or not peace will ever come. Many Black women see peace as something externally determined. Their language is wrought with statements like, “If these kids would … If my boss would … If my husband would just …” The problem with these would statements is that they often never occur, and if they do, women cannot stop to celebrate their occurrence because the next demand is on the horizon. These impossible if-then clauses foster feelings of helplessness and suggest to those that treat and study Black women’s mental health issues that peace must be internally defined.

SURVIVING STRESS VERSUS THRIVING IN SPITE OF IT

Numerous studies have suggested that women display and endorse symptoms of depression, anxiety, somatization, and other psychiatric disorders more than men (e.g., Rosenfeld, 1980) and other studies have shown this to be true across racial lines (e.g., Russo & Green, 1993). Although these differences have been attributed to many variables such as lower self-esteem and lower social class, evidence exists that gender differences in levels of stress may contribute to the development of psychiatric symptoms.

Landrine (1995) found that negative life events, chronic stress, and everyday hassles contributed to the higher rate of depression, anxiety, and somatization disorders and even physical illness among women. Munford (1994) commented that differences between men and women might be accounted for by women’s increased tendency to self-derogate in the face of stressful events, or the possibility that the environmental contributors to stress are not the same for men and women. Supporting this latter claim, Russo (1985) noted that several stressors germane to womanhood, such as sexual and physical assault, are not included in typical stress scales.

Brown and Harris (1978) suggested that chronic exposure to negative life events and stressful situations increases one’s vulnerability to psychological maladjustment. Other studies have shown strong correlations between chronic exposure to discrimination and impaired psychological and physiological health among Black people (Krieger & Sidney, 1996; Thompson & Neville, 1999) and among women (Klonoff & Landrine, 1995).

The practitioners in this study admitted to largely teaching clients survival methods rather than focusing on inner peace and other approaches to thriving. Respondents acknowledged the fact that they leaned toward the development of immediate coping skills because, unfortunately, many Black female clients are in immediate crisis when they come in for ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Learning to BREATHE: Toward a Balanced Model of Black Women’s Wellness
• Part I Balancing Vulnerability
• Part II Balancing Strength
• Part III Strategies for Balance
• Afterword
• Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover