Confessions from a Region of my Mind: Reflections on Black Mental Health

March 12, 2023

Today marks the last day of Black mental health week of 2023 in Toronto. Being so, I wanted to hold space for this conversation to reflect on my own experiences, and shed light on the mental health challenges for Black people living in low-income, high-crime, or racist environments. My hope is to bring attention to the gap that exists in our Black mental health conversations and services, as our approach in some circumstances have neglected some of our community members that need these resources the most.

When it comes to my own mental health challenges I don’t want to act as if now, I’m not able to speak from a position of privilege in being able to access certain resources, if I desired to. I also won’t pretend that I’ve had serious challenges that disrupt my ability to function daily, or that I have continuous conversations about mental health. However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that the compounded effects of traumatic events throughout my life will arbitrarily choose a day to creep up on me and perplex my soul. It’s hard to describe in words. But it feels like, and seems to be, this internal yet eternal grieving that puts a pit in my stomach for reasons I cannot comprehend. And because of this, I’ll question, why today?

Sometimes I know the answer. Sometimes it’s the connection or isolation of the time and space I find myself in that trigger a painful or stressful memory. In moments like these, I become this reclusive being, disappearing into the 4 corners of my bedroom walls to sleep in darkness.

It’s in this same darkness that I’ve noticed something else. Since I was young I’ve noticed that from time to time the arbitrariness of my thoughts and vivid dreams will wake me before daylight. Often, I’ll sit up in my bed with a puzzled look on my face trying to recall or make sense of what I dreamt. In other cases, I’ve realized that some suppressed experiences—experiences I had narrowly forgotten—were oddly manipulated and re-experienced as I slept. The day I wrote this was one of those days.

The time and connection my mind pulled from from this dream can be understood through my childhood. As a child, my mother would walk my brother and I through our neighbourhood and intentionally tell us how to move in these environments. I was taught who to acknowledge, what areas to avoid, when to fight, when to run, and when I should call for help. She schooled us, and taught until these lessons became internalized rules for living. Because of this, I can’t say I’ve ever really operated with blissful ignorance with respect to my surroundings. I’ve always questioned everything and everyone. I’ve trusted nothing and no one, until it’s proven that it should be otherwise. It was these same lessons that I pulled on when I got older and was confronted with various situations. And it’s the memories of these same situations that today, will randomly create this short-lived anxiety as the feelings rush back.

It’s moments like these that cause me to reflect on the power of the subconscious to trigger undesired memories and feelings. But on the other hand, the moments at which some memories, experiences, and dreams present themselves have always struck me as odd—sometimes troubling. I can only describe these feelings as a sense of PTSD from various traumatic experiences that have left their imprint on my mind and mental health. However, the shield of hyper-masculinity seeks to mask my emotions, forcing me to smile to bury my thoughts.

Although buried, I must say, the recollection of these experiences aren’t remotely crippling for myself. They act as constant reminders to confront my feelings given that when I don’t, they materialize down the line when I least expect it.

"I asked her where she wanna be when she twenty-five She turned around and looked at me and said, "Alive" Welcome to the jungle, welcome to the jungle "
~ Jay z - welcome to the Jungle

I tell these stories in abstract because my goal is to shed light on the mental health struggles of Black people growing up in low-income, violent, or racist environments. Specifically because many in these communities learn similar lessons to what I did. But for some, the traumatic experiences in their environment and/or personal involvements in certain activities create an additional set of rules to live by for survival and perceived personal sanity. I know these rules. For various reasons, some of you reading this may know them too, as well as the hyper-vigilance this entails. For others, let me paint the picture.

There are certain environments that expose people to different ways of being for survival and self-preservation. There are many types of people in these environments; but for some, it causes them to adopt the harshest mentality of the environment. For others, the environment increases their anxiety and urgency to escape.

For both of these types of people, the anxiety and distrust causes them to diligently watch their back. They live with a consistent uneasiness that creates a guarded disposition, forcing them to walk down the street with their head on a swivel. In other moments they might take it to the extreme and lock themselves in their home because they’ll be able to control who they interact with there.

Even with this sense of security, the environment might elevate their anxiety, pushing them to do things like look out their window each day and night, for months, peering down the block to see if there’s anything unusual. Any individual who operates like this is in a vicious state of anticipation—anticipation of the worst. But there’s also fear—maybe not quite of the situation itself, but what they might perceivably be forced to do, and the consequences of these actions. And so, they’re left wondering if they should act first, just in case, instead of waiting to see the outcome. Of course, it’s more likely that they’ll mediate these feelings and try to calm themselves down, but the compounding effects of these things slowly builds their anxiety as they question, “will it be today?”

What I’ve just described is one of the idiosyncratic experiences some Black people in these communities are feeling, and how their surroundings and lack of safety negatively impacts their mental health. This buildup of anticipation, anger, anxiety, and fear can create a paranoid individual. And for a select few, paranoia creates a dangerous individual.

"All the youngins in my hood popping percs now Gettin' high they get by, it's gettin' worse now" ~Meek Mill – Championships

When it comes to Black mental health, we often—and for good reason—address the challenges Black people face around depression, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia and the like. In part, more recent discussions have focused on these areas because mental health has been taboo in Black communities. Seemingly left out of these discussions is the mental trauma Black people living in low-income, racist, and high crime neighbourhoods face, and how it shapes their realities. We can also add the experiences of Black refugees and immigrants who grew up with similar experiences. Often, people, but particularly youth, living in these environments experience and see things they wouldn’t encounter in regular environments. From dead people and gang violence, to being raised by drug addicts and severe racism, we’ve somehow left those burdened with these painful experiences out of our conversations and considerations.

Because of this lack of consideration, to cope, some have turned to drugs to numb the pain and drown out the noise. This reliance on drugs as a remedy for pain and anxiety in these communities is something we’ve repeatedly seen in Black communities over the last 80 years. Malcolm X, for example, discussed how he was hooked on heroin for a number years living in Harlem. Stanley “Tookie” Williams discussed in his biography how he constantly used “sherm” (tobacco or marijuana dipped into PCP, known as “embalming fluid”) to escape from the harsh realities and violence in Los Angeles. During the crack epidemic, many Black people became users for similar reasons. This means that there is a unique relationship between drug abuse and mental health for Black people in these environments.

In recent years what we have seen are more Black youths abusing drugs for similar reasons. Studies have shown that many use Percocet’s or smoke a variety of substances. The danger here, particularly with Percocet’s, is the fact that it’s deemed a gateway drug to heroin, which today can be mixed with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, causing increases in deaths of Black people.

Attention in the area of Black mental health and drug use is important because fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. If we look to the U.S, between 2014 and 2017, the fatal overdose rate among African Americans shot up by 94.1 percent—more than double the 44.6 percent increase for whites. The result was about 7 in 10 African Americans who died of a drug overdose in 2017, lived in counties classified as “heavily urban” by the National Center for Health Statistics, compared with 3 in 10 whites.

In saying all of this what becomes clear is the gap in addressing the social determinants of health in Black communities, but also the ignorance among Black people in how to cope with their problems, and who to go to. What’s more, because of their everyday struggles, there’s restraint in allowing one’s self to express their emotions for fear of being perceived as weak. The result is that their darkest memories and thoughts unwittingly bubble to the surface in ways and moments that they least expect.

As Black mental health week in Canada comes to an end, I want to encourage us all to continue to boldly confront and deal with our feelings despite the stigma, because taking care of ourselves is also indicative of our mental health. But I want to spotlight our communities that lack the resources and services to have these conversations and utilize healthy mechanisms to cope, because there remains significant work to be done in these areas to bring help to our most disadvantaged and neglected people when they need it.

Black health matters.

Black mental health resources: