Trauma and Mental Health Social Work With Urban Populations by Rhonda Wells-Wilbon Anthony Estreet

Author:Rhonda Wells-Wilbon, Anthony Estreet [Rhonda Wells-Wilbon, Anthony Estreet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367227340
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

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THE FINGERPRINT OF TRAUMA ON BLACK YOUTH

A critical analysis of Eurocentric social work models with African American adolescents and the shift toward the Afrocentric paradigm

Cashmere O’Neal, Loren Henderson

DOI: 10.4324/9780429276613-12

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is often associated with returning war veterans; however, many low-income African American adolescents find themselves living in urban war-like settings and at an increased risk of developing PTSD. Systemic racism, oppressive practices, and the bilateral parallel of trauma stemming from slavery in the United States to racial disparities in contemporary America undergirds the intergenerational experience of mental health symptomatology consistent with PTSD criterion. The severity of the symptoms is often correlated with the type and length of exposure to the trauma (Shalev, Tuval-Mashiach, & Hadar, 2004). While debilitating for adults, these symptoms can be onerous and manifest differently among adolescents, who tend to display many of these symptoms alongside impulsive and aggressive behaviors (Hamblen & Barnet, 2018). In addition, adolescence is a stage of vulnerability due to the significant neurological and social development changes occurring during puberty (Larsen & Luna, 2018). Thus, Black youth experiencing PTSD often suffer from severe mental health effects, neurological impairments (Herring, Phillips, Fournier, Kronhaus, & Germain, 2013), social and economic disruptions (Guessoum et al., 2020), as well as debilitating disruption to their quality of life, and at worst morbidity (Carr et al., 2013).

Interestingly, PTSD does not manifest equally among adolescents. For example, according to Merikangas et al. (2010) using data from The National Comorbidity Survey Adolescent Supplement, the data determined that girls are more likely than boys (8.0% vs 2.3%) to suffer from PTSD, and as age increases so does the rate of PTSD. Disturbingly, 33% of women have experienced sexual abuse before reaching 18 years old (Wyatt, Axelrod, Chin, Carmona, & Loeb, 2000). With such large numbers of women reporting sexual abuse before age 18, which we can be sure is much higher due to underreporting, adolescent girls are clearly at risk for PTSD. African Americans are also more likely to suffer from multiple traumatic events. These multiple experiences create an increased risk of delinquency compared with their White peers, but there are mixed results on the rates of racial differences in PTSD among adolescents (López et al., 2017). Unfortunately, low-income African American adolescents are more likely to live in residentially segregated communities with high levels of crime and parental incarceration (Morsy & Rothstein, 2019). Living in violent neighborhoods with exposure to trauma increases the risk for developing PTSD (Gillikin et al., 2016).

Living in urban neighborhoods also increases the risk of experiencing a traumatic event (Breslau & Davis, 1992). Given the vast differences in the lived experiences between African American and White adolescents that may lead to PTSD, this chapter will explore Eurocentric modalities of choice for clinical interventions for trauma Black adolescents face, which often result in some form of the Freudian talk therapy paradigm inclusive of psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), self-centered therapy, group and family therapy. We posit that CBT models are limited in their use due to cultural limitations and their partial effectiveness among Black youth.

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