“Amid a mental health crisis affecting both younger and adult Black males, the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research held a daylong symposium on May 13 to have critical conversations untangling the complexities of the problem and examining potential solutions. According to the National Institute of Minority Health and Health disparities, Black men are 4 times likelier to die by suicide than Black women. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has seen a 60 percent rise in suicide rates among Black boys over the past two decades.” - Nikki Rojas
“Historically, Black men are taught that mental health issues are “white people’s problems” and that Black men do not need to concern themselves with mental health. Simultaneously, many Black faith communities have taught that mental health issues are the result of a lack of faith, and if one just “trusts in God” all mental health problems will disappear. Thus, a dangerous silence exists in the Black community that is devastating Black men. It is time to break the silence!” - Rev. C.W. Dawson Jr.
"The history of slavery and systematic oppression of African Americans has negatively impacted mental well-being and plays a significant role in seeking help. Historical roots deeply anchor African American skepticism toward medical and mental health treatment, dating back to slavery in 1619 (Poussaint & Alexander, 2001). Between 20 to 30 million Africans were captured and forcibly brought into chattel slavery, recognized as one of the most insidious forms of mental and physical torment (Ramos, 2014). This period marked the onset of the cruelest racial oppression endured by African Americans, involving degradation, starvation, whipping, beating, lynching, rape, separation from family, and other atrocities inflicted by the white majority. This systematic abuse aimed to psychologically dehumanize African Americans, strategically diminishing their status to that of an object and stripping away any sense of humanity. This points to intergenerational trauma that has shaped the mental health of African American men. According to Brooks and Hopkins (2017), using data from the Summary Health Statistics 2012 report, “African Americans were less likely than White people to have seen a doctor or other health professional in the past six months” while also examining the attitudes of minority groups in “adverse reactions by White clinicians” which illustrated that the higher the distrust scores, the more negative were attitudes. During the 1800s, Dr. Thomas Hamilton utilized an African American male slave to evaluate the effects of the medication he was developing for heat strokes. Throughout the experiment, the slave fainted and had to be revived to continue the study (Douglas, 2020). In addition, the infamous Tuskegee study involved deceiving 600 African American men, injecting them with syphilis, and falsely promising them free health care, which they never received (Chatmon, 2020). The historical–cultural evidence of distrust suggests that African American men have justified reasons to be distrustful of health systems, causing them to refrain from seeking treatment due to apprehensions about the treatment’s validity.” - Excerpt from American Journal of Men’s Health (Sept 2024)
