These resources highlight the importance of mental health care in the Black community and how societal, economic, and sociopolitical systems often overlook the unique needs of the community. Some book topics recognize the need for creating space for self-care in Black communities and acknowledging the emotional labor of being Black in our racist society and the fatigue it causes.
Black Women's Mental Health: Balancing Strength and Vulnerability
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Creates a new framework for approaching Black women's wellness, by merging theory and practice with both personal narratives and public policy.
The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health: Navigate an Unequal System, Learn Tools for Emotional Wellness, and Get the Help You Deserve
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An unapologetic exploration of the Black mental health crisis--and a comprehensive road map to getting the care you deserve in an unequal system. We can't deny it any longer: there is a Black mental health crisis in our world today. Black people die at disproportionately high rates due to chronic illness, suffer from poverty, under-education, and the effects of racism. This book is an exploration of Black mental health in today's world, the forces that have undermined mental health progress for African Americans, and what needs to happen for African Americans to heal psychological distress, find community, and undo years of stigma and marginalization in order to access effective mental health care. In The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health, psychologist and African American mental health expert Rheeda Walker offers important information on the mental health crisis in the Black community, how to combat stigma, spot potential mental illness, how to practice emotional wellness, and how to get the best care possible in system steeped in racial bias. This breakthrough book will help you: Recognize mental and emotional health problems Understand the myriad ways in which these problems impact overall health and quality of life and relationships Develop psychological tools to neutralize ongoing stressors and live more fully Navigate a mental health care system that is unequal It's past time to take Black mental health seriously. Whether you suffer yourself, have a loved one who needs help, or are a mental health professional working with the Black community, this book is an essential and much-needed resource.
Black Mental Health: Patients, Providers, and Systems
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Novel in its approach and unique in its scope, Black Mental Health: Patients, Providers, and Systems examines the role of African Americans within American psychiatric health care from distinct but interconnected perspectives. The experiences of both black patients and the black mental health professionals who serve them are analyzed against the backdrop of the cultural, societal, and professional forces that have shaped their place in this specialized health care arena. The volume opens with the singular, first-person accounts of five senior black psychiatrists--including Dr. Altha J. Stewart, president of the American Psychiatric Association--who describe their individual journeys to the top of their field, not shying away from discussing the racism and discrimination that have challenged their paths to leadership. The book's second part focuses on the complexities of and opportunities for delivering mental health care to various subsets of the African American population, including children, women, elderly patients, and LGBTQ individuals. System design strategies, biological therapies, and church-based mental health promotion initiatives are all considered as methods for reducing racial and ethnic disparities in access to effective treatment. Part III examines the training of black mental health professionals and their representation in psychiatry, particularly in the face of discrimination and implicit bias. A chapter on historically black colleges and universities discusses the importance of their role in the delivery of psychiatric services and research development for African Americans. The fourth part builds on this discussion, addressing research that is relevant to the care of the black population. A concluding chapter highlights the key themes that emerged from each of the previous four parts, providing a holistic view of the place of black patients and providers in American psychiatry. With its blend of scholarship, clinical insight, and training analysis, Black Mental Health is compulsory reading both for trainees--as care delivery to minority groups is of ever greater importance--and practicing clinicians, who will glean useful information from the chapters on research advances and treatment modalities. Additionally, policy makers, educators, and historians, among others, will gain a better understanding of the challenges and necessity of developing integrated approaches to the care of nondominant groups.
Mental Health in a Multi-Ethnic Society: A Multidisciplinary Handbook
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This new edition of Mental Health in a Multi-Ethnic Society is an authoritative, comprehensive guide on issues around race, culture and mental health service provision. It has been updated to reflect the changes in the UK over the last ten years and features entirely new chapters by over twenty authors, expanding the range of topics by including issues of particular concern for women, family therapy, and mental health of refugees and asylum seekers. Divided into four sections the book covers: issues around mental health service provision for black and minority ethnic (BME) communities including refugees and asylum seekers critical accounts of how these issues may be confronted, with examples of projects that attempt to do just that programs and innovative services that appear to meet some of the needs of BME communities a critical but constructive account of lessons to be drawn from earlier sections and discussion of the way ahead. With chapters on training, service user involvement, policy development and service provision Mental Health in a Multi-Ethnic Society will appeal to academics, professionals, trainers and managers, as well as providing up-to-date information for a general readership.
Psychiatry and Racial Liberalism in Harlem, 1936-1968
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Reveals the history of the individuals who worked to make psychiatry more available to Harlem's black community in the early Civil Rights Era. Toward the middle of the twentieth century, African Americans in New York City began to receive increased access to mental health care in some facilities within the city's mental health system. This study documents how and why this important change in public health-and in public opinion on race-occurred. Drawing on records from New York's children's courts, Harlem's public schools, Columbia University, and the Department of Hospitals, Dennis Doyle tells here the story of the American psychiatrists and civil servants who helped codify in New York's mental health policies the view that blacks and whites are psychological equals. The book examines in particular the events through which these racial liberals working in Harlem gained a foothold within New York's public institutions, creating inclusive public policies and ostensibly race-neutral standards of care. Psychiatry and Racial Liberalism in Harlem, 1936-1968 not only contributes to the growing body of historiography on race and medical institutions in the civil rights era but, more importantly, shows how inveterate racial prejudices within public policy can be overcome. Dennis A. Doyle is assistant professor of history at the Saint Louis College of Pharmacy.
Black LGBT Health in the United States: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation
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Black LGBT Health in the United States: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation focuses on the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of health, and considers both risk and resiliency factors for the Black LGBT population. Contributors to this collection intimately understand the associations between health and intersectional anti-Black racism, heterosexism, homonegativity, biphobia, transphobia, and social class. This collection fills a gap in current scholarship by providing information about an array of health issues like cancer, juvenile incarceration, and depression that affect all subpopulations of Black LGBT people, especially Black bisexual-identified women, Black bisexual-identified men, and Black transgender men. This book is recommended for readers interested in psychology, health, gender studies, race studies, social work, and sociology.
Institutional Racism in Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology: Race Matters in Mental Health
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This book examines the deep roots of racism in the mental health system. Suman Fernando weaves the histories of racial discourse and clinical practice into a narrative of power, knowledge, and black suffering in an ostensibly progressive and scientifically grounded system. Drawing on a lifetime of experience as a practicing psychiatrist, he examines how the system has shifted in response to new forms of racism which have emerged since the 1960s, highlighting the widespread pathologization of black people, the impact of Islamophobia on clinical practice after 9/11, and various struggles to reform. Engaging and accessible, this book makes a compelling case for the entrenchment of racism across all aspects of psychiatry and clinical psychology, and calls for a paradigm shift in both theory and practice.
Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit
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This is the first book to define and explore Black fatigue, the intergenerational impact of systemic racism on the physical and psychological health of Black people--and explain why and how society needs to collectively do more to combat its pernicious effects. Black people, young and old, are fatigued, says award-winning diversity and inclusion leader Mary-Frances Winters. It is physically, mentally, and emotionally draining to continue to experience inequities and even atrocities, day after day, when justice is a God-given and legislated right. And it is exhausting to have to constantly explain this to white people, even--and especially--well-meaning white people, who fall prey to white fragility and too often are unwittingly complicit in upholding the very systems they say they want dismantled. This book, designed to illuminate the myriad dire consequences of "living while Black," came at the urging of Winters's Black friends and colleagues. Winters describes how in every aspect of life--from economics to education, work, criminal justice, and, very importantly, health outcomes--for the most part, the trajectory for Black people is not improving. It is paradoxical that, with all the attention focused over the last fifty years on social justice and diversity and inclusion, little progress has been made in actualizing the vision of an equitable society. Black people are quite literally sick and tired of being sick and tired. Winters writes that "my hope for this book is that it will provide a comprehensive summary of the consequences of Black fatigue, and awaken activism in those who care about equity and justice--those who care that intergenerational fatigue is tearing at the very core of a whole race of people who are simply asking for what they deserve." Reading group discussion guide available.
The Language of Strong Black Womanhood
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In The Language of Strong Black Womanhood: Myths, Models, Messages, and a New Mandate for Self-Care, Black women of the Baby Boomer generation and Hip Hop generation share messages communicated and models witnessed in their socialization for strength revealing how this mandate endures in Black women's lived experiences. They also express concern that self-care was not presented as critical for sustaining life as a strong Black woman--a concern shared by Black women bloggers who advocate resisting the myth and redefining strength for self-care. This Black feminist exploration of strong Black womanhood provides an alternative to harmful perceptions, constructions, and representations of Black women and suggests a mandate to move toward the revolutionary act of Black women's self-care.
In and Out of Our Right Minds: The Mental Health of African American Women
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African American women have commonly been portrayed as "pillars" of their communities--resilient mothers, sisters, wives, and grandmothers who remain steadfast in the face of all adversities. While these portrayals imply that African American women have few psychological problems, the scientific literature and demographic data present a different picture. They reveal that African American women are at increased risk for psychological distress because of factors that disproportionately affect them, including lower incomes, greater poverty and unemployment, unmarried motherhood, racism, and poor physical health. Yet at the same time, rates of mental illness are low. This invaluable book is the first comprehensive examination of the contradictions between the strengths and vulnerabilities of this population. Using the contexts of race, gender, and social class, In and Out of Our Right Minds challenges the traditional notions of mental health and mental illness as they apply to African American women.
Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America
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"Always moving, at times haunting, and often inspirational, Shifting provides a richly textured look at the lives of Black women. Jones and Shorter-Gooden poignantly portray the day-to-day challenges and triumphs of 'sisters' at work, in relationships, and in their spiritual lives." -- Bebe Moore Campbell, author of What You Owe Me Based on the African American Women's Voices Project, Shifting reveals that a large number of African American women feel pressure to compromise their true selves as they navigate America's racial and gender bigotry. Black women "shift" by altering the expectations they have for themselves or their outer appearance. They modify their speech. They shift "white" as they head to work in the morning and "Black" as they come back home each night. They shift inward, internalizing the searing pain of the negative stereotypes that they encounter daily. And sometimes they shift by fighting back. With deeply moving interviews, poignantly revealed on each page, Shifting is a much-needed, clear, and comprehensive portrait of the reality of African American women's lives today.
The Hidden Among the Hidden: African-American Elder Male Caregivers
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The growing number of elder men providing hands-on care to loved ones, particularly spouses, undeniably represents a hidden segment of the home care population. With that in consideration, caregiving in communities of color, in particular, is increasing while numbers of informal (unpaid)caregivers are projected to triple by 2030. Despite statistics, studies on African-American men who care for other elders (such as spouses and parents) - indeed, "the hidden among the hidden" - are negligible. This text follows a study conducted by Helen Black, a research scientist focusing onaging, alongside John Groce and Charles Harmon, founders of Mature Africans Learning from Each Other (M.A.L.E.), in which they interviewed elderly African-American men in caregiver roles.As a whole, The Hidden Among the Hidden is unique in its study of caregiving in the areas of subject matter, methodology, and presentation of findings. The men whose attitudes and behaviors toward caregiving are recorded in this book share a wealth of knowledge for other caregivers, gerontologists,healthcare professionals, students, and the community in general.