The system of mental health is different for BIPOC to navigate, and often fails to recognise the intersections of mental health and race, and any other identities we may have. Everything in the mental health system centres on whiteness; white therapists, white researchers, white patients, and when it doesn’t centre on whiteness, the system tries to pack the issues separately: one over here and the other over there. Never acknowledging how deeply the issues are intertwined. The relationship between these intersections and how they contribute to anxiety and depression displays itself in many subtle ways, the trauma being woven into the fabric of our lives. This is being proven by emerging research discussing how ancestral trauma might impact a person’s genes today. Yet when seeking support, these cultural factors are not considered by the people who claim to offer help. Ultimately, this affects our care in the mental health system, and how we see ourselves.
When what’s classified as complementary therapies in the Western world come in the stolen forms of ‘new age culture’, which usually includes some form cultural appropriation that tokenises and disrespects our beliefs and traditions (herbalism, crystals, meditation, yoga, etc.) it’s hard for many BIPOC to have supportive experiences due to feeling isolated from healing via these colonised frameworks, especially in predominately white locations. When our experiences and identities are only allowed to exist in these conditions, where we’re seen as tiresome if we speak out about our discomfort, where we are erased from histories, our lineages, and from our traditional systems of community, we end up only seeing ourselves through the negative lenses that remain. As mentally ill BIPOC, we are isolated, silenced, and stripped of a sense of belonging, and then we are expected to get well. I literally don’t remember a large majority of my teens because of anxiety and depression. Getting out of bed is more often than not a chore and I’ve never known how to sleep. Leaving the house is always a big deal, and panic attacks are just a regular part of my life that i must always take into account. Cleaning the house, showering, working, going to school, socialising. All of these things are just hard for me to do. Yes its infuriating, yes its tiring, yes its debilitating. But we need to talk about it, and we need to be represented and present in the spaces where we do talk about it. This includes creating our own institutions, as well as decolonizing the old ones. It includes making it easier for BIPOC to find BIPOC therapists, and educating our own communities on the prevalence of mental health and how racial trauma has a very real and active part in that. We need to talk about racial fatigue, we need to talk about the ever growing suicide rate in various BIPOC communities, we need to talk about the way in which treatment research is conducted and who it is (and isn’t) tested on, we need to talk about the stripping of cultural contexts from mental health via colonialism, we need to talk about culturally appropriated spirituality and healing practices and how harmful this is. We need to talk about the stigmatisation of mental illness within our communities. We need to talk about how being strong as BIPOC is a fact and it is how we’ve survived, but it isn’t a sustainable state of living. We need to talk about how there is no end to our trauma; especially when it is systemic, and it is ongoing. Mental illness doesn’t discriminate on the basis of identity or background. Intersectional mental health is complex, but it is that complexity that we need to acknowledge and seek support through.