Conference to Look at How Racism Affects Mental Health

Conference to Look at How Racism
Affects Mental Health

By ANITA WADHWANI
Tennessean Staff Writer June 28, 2004

Bob Marley spun racism into reggae music, while Washington-area sniper Lee Boyd Malvo devolved into violence and self-destruction, according to organizers of an upcoming conference that will consider their different responses and the mental health effects of racism.

The conference at Meharry Medical Center tomorrow, called ''Creativity and Madness in the African Diaspora,'' will examine how racism and the legacy of slavery pushes some black people either to acts of heroism or creative genius, while others are pushed into violence and mental illness.

While most African-Americans are somewhere between the two extremes, they are shaped psychologically by racial oppression, said conference organizer Denise Shervington, chairwoman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Meharry.

Shervington, a psychiatrist, once had a client who was a successful professional but whose personal life was marred by a series of romantic failures. The client couldn't stay in a relationship and wondered why, she said.

Six months into therapy, the man began to realize that his body image was getting in the way. His dark skin color and the shape of his nose was affecting the way he thought of himself. That poor self-image is part of a legacy of racism, Shervington said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has documented disparities in the mental health issues facing African-Americans vs. other races and ethnicities.

Since 1980, suicide has doubled among young black men, according to the CDC. And because African-Americans are over-represented among the homeless, incarcerated, children in foster care and residents of high-crime neighborhoods, they are exposed to more risk factors for mental illness. African-Americans also are less likely to seek treatment than are their white counterparts.

Those are among the factors that have led Shervington and others to coin the term ''post-traumatic slavery disorder.''

Wendel Abel, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of West Indies in Jamaica, describes that legacy as one of social exclusion.

Malvo was an example of a bright young man who excelled in school, even though he had been left in Jamaica by his mother, Abel said. When she brought him to the United States, he experienced a kind of exclusion from society because he is black that he had not experienced in Jamaica and latched onto the much older John Allen Mohammed. The pair eventually shot and killed 10 people in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia over a three-week span in October 2002.

Last year a jury rejected Malvo's insanity plea. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Mental health experts said no one's behavior can be attributed solely to race.

''We do need to be careful that we don't say we behave in certain ways because of our history,'' said Oscar Morgan, chief operating officer for the National Mental Health Association and the organization's director of cultural competency activities.

''There are many factors that should be considered, such as political, economic, social, relationships with family members, and life experiences that all play into it,'' he said. ''Mental health does not discriminate. But race, ethnicity and culture are part of the equation, and mental health professionals should take that all into account when they are trying to treat mental illness.''

Source: Tennessean

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