Its Black History Month
It’s the start of Black History Month and I wanted to share about Black mental health care. As a black clinician in the mental health field, I feel like work tirelessly to ensure I maintain competency in different therapeutic modalities as a way to provide black patients with the best care.
In mental health the disparity between black clinicians and white clinicians is wide. In a survey done by the Black Mental Health Workforce, it found that there are 1.2 million behavioral health providers and when it comes to black providers; Nationally, 4% of psychologists (American Psychological Association, 2018) , 2% of psychiatrists (American Psychiatric Association, 2021), 22% of social workers (Institute for Health Workforce Equity, 2020), 7% of marriage and family counselors, and 11% of professional counselors are reported to be Black. https://abpsi.org/blackmhworkforce/
This is in stark contrast to a 2020 report done by the American Psychological Association center for workforce studies that reports 86% of psychologists are white. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/02/datapoint
In 2024 we still haven’t closed the gap or even come close to closing the gap in the percentage of black providers compared to White providers. We can say there is a lack of progress in this aspect of black mental health care.
As a mental health advocate and a provider, I meet many black patients and they are often so happy to be connected to someone that looks like them and feel they can now work through their issues in a safe space.
Black people suffer in silence often because past generations have passed down internalized beliefs about themselves and the world around them. Many patients I see say they have felt some kind of distress for a long while, but they didn’t know how to start getting support.
In black families, therapeutic intervention meant having someone scrutinize your life and offer culturally inappropriate treatment. Black people have learned that suffering in silence is their best option. Silence means they can stay safe in a world that constantly disapproves of their entire existence.
In mental health treatment, white theories are centered and cost a lot to learn. In the black community Mental health treatment has not been favorable as patients don’t trust the system. The system employs standardized treatment that does not address the biases that pose harm to black clients.
Although I do believe In utilizing these standard treatments, I am often trying to figure out how to make the material palatable and adaptive for the real-world situations my black client may need to use them in.
Mental health care is so important to all people because we have so much going on and so much we take in. Our mental health can decline if we don’t appropriately implement skills and tools to manage the stress. When we think of mental health care for Black people its so important to ensure that treatment is culturally competent. One way to do that is to have black clinicians paired with black patients.