“Education is
Whitey’s Thing”
Carl C. Bell, M.D.
Dr. Bell will discuss stigma as a barrier to
positive mental health outcomes among African-Americans. People with status can throw it away. Since many African-Americans do not have status,
they are very careful to protect it. In
fact, some of us attempt to create status where there is none. A significant segment of the
African-American population spends a great deal of their limited resources on
cosmetics, clothes, status symbols (e.g., fancy cars). Dr. Kenneth Clark has called this behavior
“over compensatory grandiosity,” and suggests it is in response to feelings of
being inadequate. Dr. Charles Pinderhughes
traces the inadequate feelings internal psychodynamics and to being chronically
denigrated by Western culture.
Accordingly, having the double stigma of being a “minority” in addition
to having a mental illness is much harder to bear and is more assiduously
avoided.
Supposedly, one manner of breaking stigma’s
grip is through education.
Unfortunately, far too many African-Americans view education as “Whitey’s
Thing.” As a result, some
African-Americans avoid academic learning opportunities as being “white.” In addition, there are concerted efforts of
miseducating African-Americans, making it all the more difficult for
African-Americans to obtain accurate information about mental health, mental
wellness, and mental health treatment.
Specifically, there are groups of antipsychiatrists who are promulgating
slick, antipsychiatry literature in the African-American community. This literature, which plays to
African-American beliefs and values, suggests that psychiatry kills and there
is a genocidal plot to put African-Americans on mind controlling
medication. Thus, in addition, concerns
to over-identifying with Euro-American culture and supporting “monocultural
ethnocentrism,” there is a serious negative propaganda campaign against
psychiatry in the African-American community.
Further, considering the racism that has historically existed in
psychiatry, such antipsychiatry campaigns tend to influence African-American
beliefs about psychiatry.
Clearly, all of these factors influence the ability to overcome mental health stigma within the African-American community. These issues and the findings from Dr. Satcher’s Mental Health Report’s focus groups on stigma, make the issue of combating stigma within the African-American community a challenge. Dr. Bell suggests, in addition to fighting antipsychiatry campaigns, aggressive culturally sensitive social marketing as a potential solution.