Healthcare in the Black Community Essay Example

The American male youths from Communities of African origin have been classified as being of high risk on issues of mental health in the United States of America. According to the U.S Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher, the major cause of this is the fact that most African Americans hail from underprivileged settings. Their communities are mostly characterized by homelessness, incarceration, widespread substance abuse, and the majority of children placed in foster care. Even though the mental health services are well founded, such communities underutilize them in comparison to the White communities who are mostly affluent (Lindsey, Brown & Cunningham, 2017). Therefore, we have to investigate the help-seeking trends and intentions among these communities.

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Using qualitative and quantitative methods, researchers have been able to unearth some barriers that have hugely contributed to the prevalence of this healthcare seeking patterns. Among them are socio-cultural, economic, internal and external factors and impediments (Sullivan, Harris, Collado & Chen, 2006; Hardison, Taylor, & Chatters, 1996). Also, three major types of classification of barriers have been formulated and these include individual factors such as fear, stigma associated with seeking psychological services, attitudes, and mistrust of mental health professionals, environmental factors like family, peers, and community and finally institutional factors such as the bureaucratic red tape in seeking mental services by the said groups. Optional avenues of help such as the Black Church, from which majority of Black Americans seek social and psychological help, have been cited as the causes for not depending on mainstream avenues of help.

According to the data from the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), about 1 in 5 or 21.4 percent of the youth aged between 13 and 18 experience severe mental disorders at some point of their lives. Age-Group is the most affected. Majority of these are again the Black Americans who seek medical attention at the rate of one half the rate of Caucasian Americans and Asians; the effects are quite devastating. Over 37 percent of the Black American students with mental problems drop out of school, and this is the highest among any group of people with disability (Lu et al. 2017). Also, about 90 percent of the deaths due to suicides of Black Americans in this age bracket are usually directly linked to mental problems (Lindsey et al. 2006).

To change the all-time poor help-seeking behavior, several measures need to be adopted. Among them is providing avenues for widespread information on mental health to the group. The said measure can help change the view held by them that seeking of medical care on this problem is a weakness and a sign of defeat. They also have a problem with the identification of the signs and symptoms of the condition which could be solved by proper education. Secondly, the capacity of the Black churches and African families to handle such victims professionally should be enhanced (Cuevas, O'Brien, & Saha, 2016). They serve as the main support systems of immediate help to victims. Finally, the mental health services should be widely available, providing medication with fewer side effect and free from provider bias, and inequality against the Black American population has been the case.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the healthcare help-seeking behavior among the Black American youth has never been good at any point in history. However, with proper implementation of the above measures, the situation is expected to change for the better.

References

Cuevas, A. G., O'Brien, K., & Saha, S. (2016). African American experiences in healthcare: "I always feel like I'm getting skipped over." Health Psychology, 35(9), 987.

Lindsey, M. A., Brown, D. R., & Cunningham, M. (2017). Boys don't) cry: Addressing the unmet mental health needs of African American boys. The American Journal Of Orthopsychiatry, 87(4), 377-383. https://doi-org.proxy.ccis.edu/10.1037/ort0000198

Lindsey, M. A., Korr, W. S., Broitman, M., Bone, L., Green, A., & Leaf, P. J. (2006). Help-Seeking Behaviors and Depression among African American Adolescent Boys. Social Work, 51(1), 49. https://doi-org.proxy.ccis.edu/10.1093/sw/51.1.49

Lu, W., Lindsey, M. A., Irsheid, S., & Nebbitt, V. E. (2017). Psychometric Properties of the CES-D among Black Adolescents in Public Housing. Journal of the Society for Social Work & Research, 8(4), 595-619. https://doi-org.proxy.ccis.edu/10.1086/69479