Being a black man in America means being my brother’s keeper. Being a black man in America means being my brother’s keeper while keeping a distance from my brother because I don’t trust him further than I can see him. It’s believing the cops don’t care about you. It’s learning how not to doubt yourself because when you’re born everyone else already does.
—Poet Prentice Powell, written following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014
Statistics…Realities
While Black Americans experience similar rates of mental illness as other Americans in general, there are contextual differences. For example, Black adults living below the poverty line are more than twice as likely to report serious psychological distress as U.S. adults who enjoy greater financial security, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health.
As another example, depressive symptoms among Black people are more disabling, persistent, and treatment-resistant than they are among White people (Bailey, R. K., et al., Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, Vol. 15, 2019).
And Black men are not receiving the help they need for these problems. For example, only 26.4% of Black and Hispanic men ages 18 to 44 who experienced daily feelings of anxiety or depression were likely to have used mental health services, compared with 45.4% of non-Hispanic White men with the same feelings (NCHS Data Brief No. 206, 2015). When Black men do seek help and would prefer a same-race provider, it can be difficult finding Black psychologists, since they still make up only about 4% of the doctoral-level psychology workforce (though that number is growing, according to 2018 APA Center for Workforce Studies data).
At the same time, Black men’s mental health is more complex than statistics or clinical diagnoses indicate, according to subject matter experts. Because of structural racism and Black men’s unique history in this country, their mental health and treatment are intimately tied to factors such as implicit bias on the part of medical providers, high poverty rates, and low access to quality psychological and psychiatric services. Compared with White people, for example, Black people are less likely to receive guideline-consistent care or to be included in mental health research. They are also more likely to use emergency rooms or primary care for mental health problems because they have not received appropriate preventive services. (For a summary of these findings, see the American Psychiatric Association’s fact sheet on mental health disparities among African Americans at Psychiatry.org.)
So how do we address dealing with low numbers of same race providers when it comes to black men?
We have found that black men group therapy works with a same race therapist. Ranging from 5-20 participants, we have seen a tremendous number of healings within our groups. They are led by the therapist and moderator while participants are all learning from each other, connecting, bonding, and teaching each other how to address issues and heal.
