The Criminalization of Mental Illness in Black America

This article is super-important. I advise that everyone go read it. Literally, I have spent like fifteen minutes trying to come up with something to say about it that wasn’t mentioned in the article, and I’ve come up short. Excerpt:

“Black men don’t go to therapy, they go to the barbershop.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard this throughout my life, nor relate how embarrassed I am to have actually believed this at one point. The resistance black men exhibit toward mental health awareness is astounding. The belief, in my estimation, is that admitting to and/or seeking help for a mental illness makes one less of a man. We have come to define masculinity/manhood as ‘strong,’ meaning silent, emotionless, stoic and uncaring. To our detriment, black men have accepted, embraced, and perpetuated this idea and left a community of emotionally stunted black men so repressed that the mere mention of a psychiatrist is met with a chorus of hearty laughter. It doesn’t prevent us from suffering at the hands of mental illness, it’s just that black men prefer to self-medicate with marijuana and Jesus (not necessarily concurrently).”

Go! Read!