Black Men and Depression: Understanding and Overcoming Depression in Black Men by John Head

Author:John Head [Head, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-51448-6
Publisher: Harlem Moon Broadway Books
Published: 2004-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Undoubtedly, there are those who would ask why it’s important to worry about mental health care for these men on the margins—the poor, the prisoners, the homeless. As a practical matter, we might question the value of devoting limited resources to people who have so little to offer society, even when they’ve been at their best. Some might even question why I would lump these men together with the huge majority of African American men who are law-abiding and hardworking.

Alan Harris answers such questions by invoking God’s injunction that we look after the needs of the least of his children. “It’s an expression of my faith as a Christian and as a human being with compassion for other people,” he says. “The only way I know to express my faith is to act it out.”

For Dr. Keith Wood, the health care provider’s obligation to ease suffering has nothing to do with the income or social status of those who suffer.

Those altruistic arguments alone would justify efforts to extend mental health screening and treatment to the men I’ve described in this chapter, especially when their illness is as common, identifiable, and treatable as clinical depression. But there are other reasons, less noble but just as important.

We must do something about mental illness among the homeless if we’re going to make a dent in the problem of homelessness. Women and children may indeed be the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. They definitely provide the problem with its most sympathetic face. But the hardcore homeless are men on the street—with black men making up the largest segment of that population—and mental illness is the reason many of them stay there.

As for our jails and prisons, their use as repositories for mentally ill men is misbegotten and expensive public policy. The 1999 Department of Justice study of incarceration of people with mental illness found that those who aren’t treated remain behind bars longer and are more likely to return to jail once they’re released. That’s the worst kind of waste when you consider that the $20,000 to $30,000 most states pay to keep a man behind bars for a year is more than a year’s tuition at some of our top colleges.

Finally, I have given deep and serious thought about how much of this book should be devoted to the problem of depression among African American men who are behind bars or living on the streets. And it did occur to me that taking up the cause of these men runs the risk of muddying the waters on the issue of getting help for the majority of black men who suffer from depression. Why reinforce the negative stereotypes of black men; why add to the stigma that’s already attached to mental illness? And why give ammunition to those who will misinterpret this book as an attempt to excuse sins and failings of African American men?

Why? Because these men are our brothers, our fathers, our sons, our friends. We should treat them as we would want to be treated.

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