July is National Minority Mental Health Month

Principessa

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July is Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Month




In May 2008 the US House of Representatives proclaimed July as Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month. The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Albert Wynn [D-MD] and cosponsored by a large bipartisan group, was passed in recognition that:
  • Improved access to mental health treatment and services and public awareness of mental illness are of paramount importance;
  • There is an important need for improved access to care, treatment, and services for those diagnosed with severe and persistent mental health disorders and improved public awareness of mental illness; and
  • An appropriate month should be recognized as Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month to enhance public awareness of mental illness and mental illness among minorities.
NAMI is extremely grateful for this showing of bipartisan support for mental health awareness in minority communities and for the important recognition of the life of Bebe Moore Campbell.
  • Click here for more details and full text of resolution H. Con. Res. 134.
  • Read NAMI's letter of support for this important resolution here.
Bebe Moore Campbell

Bebe Moore Campbell was an accomplished author, advocate, co-founder of NAMI Urban Los Angeles and national spokesperson, who passed away in November 2006.

She received NAMI's 2003 Outstanding Media Award for Literature for the book Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry, written especially for children, about a young girl who learns how to cope with her mother's bipolar illness. In 2005, her novel 72-Hour Hold focused on an adult daughter and a family's experience with the onset of mental illness. It helped educate Americans that the struggle often is not just with the illness, but with the healthcare system as well.

Campbell advocated for mental health education and support among individuals with mental illness and their families of diverse communities.

www.bebemoorecampbell.com


To order her books, and help NAMI, visit Amazon.com

Learn More about Mental Health in Minority Communities

Many reports, including the 2001 Surgeon General’s report, Mental Health: Culture, Race and Ethnicity, identify barriers within ethnic/racial populations to access to quality mental healthcare, promoting a charge to eliminate disparities. In general, minority communities often face barriers in accessing quality mental health services such as poverty, lack of available treatments and supports, pervasive stigma and prejudice, language barriers and lack of cultural competence in service delivery.




The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality 2007 National Healthcare Disparities Report found that, overall, disparities in healthcare have not been decreasing in recent years, and though gaps in disparities data specific to mental healthcare are too large to make any such conclusions, a similar trend can be assumed.
  • Access NAMI fact sheets and other resources related to issues in multicultural mental health here.
 

vince

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Yesterday I saw a news item on CNN about a New York woman who had been waiting in the emergency room of a psych ward for 24 hours. She fell out of her chair and could not get up, struggling for over an hour before staff came to assist her. But by then she was dead.

The whole incident was caught by a security camera. There were other people sitting in the room, two security guards stopped and looked towards her and nobody lifted a finger to her her. One of the guards rolled over in his desk chair, leaned around the corner, stared at her for 15 seconds and rolled away. He never got up out of his chair.

I don't know if they need another empty "National .. .... .... Month. Seems like these things are just window dressing that make it look like the powers that be actually care or are doing something. Raising awareness sure, but putting your money where your mouth is entirely different.
 

erratic

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I'm for anything that increases the awareness of the need for mental health organizations to make a concerted effort to reach out to non-white, non-anglo communities. It can be a tough slog for both parties, but it's about bloody time.
 

Principessa

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I'm for anything that increases the awareness of the need for mental health organizations to make a concerted effort to reach out to non-white, non-anglo communities. It can be a tough slog for both parties, but it's about bloody time.


I agree. I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder 9 years ago. When I told my parents my mothers initial reaction was to pretend she didn't hear me. :confused: :wtf2: My father said I was being ridiculous and that I just needed to pray more. This was followed by his telling me, that I was a strong, black woman and our people had survived slavery. Therefore, nothing I experienced could possibly be enough to cause a depression. :12:

I can't speak for other minorities but in the black community mental illness is not acceptable. It is viewed as a weakness in character. Due to lack of knowledge of the various types of mental illness sometimes people just assume you are "crazy" and should be institutionalized or they assume you are dangerous. It is VERY common in the black community for people to turn to their pastor or Reverend with a problem. The problem with that is many of these people have no background in counseling or psychology and oft times just do more damage. :frown1:

If mental illness is discussed it's done in hushed tones the way people used to whisper that so-and-so has cancer years ago.
 

Principessa

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marleyisalegend

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Personally this issue deserves a lot more than a month. Minorities are constantly undermined and their afflictions are misrepresented. I've never had a chance to read any of Bebe's books, but she's a very Earthy lady and I'm glad this topic has been brought up.
 

marleyisalegend

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if I hear one more thing about minorities and their special needs/afflictions ...:aargh4:

The ignorant, the overpriveleged, and the simple-minded all just ignore it. Pick whichever group suits you and move the fuck on. I doubt that you are a minority since you fail to recognize the affliction they face, so it's not surprising that the need for special attention would annoy you. On behalf of all the mentally challeneged, the ethnic, the traditinoally "unpretty" people, the displaced, and lower-class, I offer you a credit card and an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog to entertain you while we spend the designated month discussing the problems we face all year long. Feel free at any point and exit this thread and return to the Eutopia you must live in where everyone is happy and no one suffers.
 
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Principessa

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The ignorant, the overpriveleged, and the simple-minded all just ignore it. Pick whichever group suits you and move the fuck on. I doubt that you are a minority since you fail to recognize the affliction they face, so it's not surprising that the need for special attention would annoy you. On behalf of all the mentally challeneged, the ethnic, the traditinoally "unpretty" people, the displaced, and lower-class, I offer you a credit card and an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog to entertain you while we spend the designated month discussing the problems we face all year long. Feel free at any point and exit this thread and return to the Eutopia you must live in where everyone is happy and no one suffers.

:kiss: I think I love you more today than yesterday; and I didn't think that was possible. :cool:
 

erratic

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if I hear one more thing about minorities and their special needs/afflictions ...:aargh4:

There's nothing special about the need for mental health care.

Most mental health organizations cater to white, English-speaking people because they are run by white, English-speaking people. It's nothing malicious; it's just incidental to the make up of those organizations. Meanwhile, there's a stigma in all communities regarding mental health problems that's especially hard to overcome in some - African, Caribbean, Chinese and Eastern European are the ones I've heard the most about.

The toll on those communities and nations as a whole is enormous - lost lives, lost jobs, lost wages, broken families, addictions, HIV/AIDS, violence, law-breaking, and the list goes on.

Some organizations are trying to reach out to communities that aren't seeking help through volunteer and hiring drives, making alliances with religious and cultural leaders and so on, but these efforts are piecemeal in that they happen in fits and sputs here and there rather than in a concerted effort.

It's important to remember that most of those communities had traditional ways of dealing with mental illness that worked for them (for better or worse), including faith, home care, and completely different lifestyles that don't fit and therefore don't work in modern Western societies. All of these people are citizens who deserve care that's suited to their needs.
 

marleyisalegend

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:kiss: I think I love you more today than yesterday; and I didn't think that was possible. :cool:

The most dangerous attitude is the ignorant fucking punks who think "It's not a problem to me so it's not worthy of mention."

Perhaps we can send them to another planet where they can lounge by the pool reading Teen Beat while us down here in the REAL world deal with REAL problems.
 

Deno

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this proves the phrase."two sides to every story" for every problem person a faces, person B faces his own. The fact that there not the same problem does not make either invalid.
 

B_Nick4444

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sorry -- the entire proposition is untenable

if a member of a "minority group" has a mental illness, it will bear the same etiology as the mental illness case of a non-minority

which also means it will be treatable in terms of the same strategies

I know, because as a teenager considering the possibility of structuring my education with the goal of getting the degrees requisite to earning the degrees that would enable me to practice psychiatry, I joined a non-profit group attempted to address the mental health "needs and concerns" of the unterklassen.

so as a teen, I entered their realm and became familiar with their situation

so, I can say, with good grounds, that to construct "special" needs for groups is untenable

the entire mindset finds its genesis in the misinformed libertardology that grounded President Johnson's Great Society programs (and we can see how well those worked out -- programs to eliminate poverty, and now a far greater percentage of the US population is now poor; -- programs to make higher education available to certain specified groups, and what was once the world's greatest educational system is now a mess)

the axioms of that libertardology in turn then became the grounds on which the current PCtardology reposes

one simply has to couch something in terms of a "minority need or special situation", and a whole panoply of rights and entitlements (and corresponding expenditures) are automatically invoked and justified
 

marleyisalegend

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sorry -- the entire proposition is untenable

Big word for someone who doesn't understand the concept of "minority" and the problems that come with it.

if a member of a "minority group" has a mental illness, it will bear the same etiology as the mental illness case of a non-minority

Brick! Again, you obviously don't realize how different life can be just because you're poor or brown.

the axioms of that libertardology in turn then became the grounds on which the current PCtardology reposes

Your big words don't mask your ignorance of how different it can be, being a minority. What you said makes sense ONLY ONLY ONLY in a world where everyone has the same opportunities. What you said WOULD make sense if everyone were treated equally. Since neither is the case, what you said is impractical.

one simply has to couch something in terms of a "minority need or special situation", and a whole panoply of rights and entitlements (and corresponding expenditures) are automatically invoked and justified

You're saying things, but not really saying anything. I have a hard time believing that if George Bush or Bill Gates passed out in a hospital, they'd be ignored for over an hour. Seeing an abundance of technical knowledge, it's a shame that you won't inject any humanity (especially since you're studying psychology) into your assessments. Your posts have a tone of someone walking into a homeless shelter and shouting "Why don't you all just get a job!"

Again, a month of recognition isn't much to ask for considering the hell they have to live with the other 335 days a year. You're being completely insensitive to a very real problem that you HAVE to know exists because you're not stupid. It'll be a cold day in hell before you respond saying "minorities always have all the same opportunities as the majority." For whatever reason, you're stubborn in your insistence that being a minority doesn't come with certain baggage.
 
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D_Kay_Sarah_Sarah

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And this is why these threads are fucked, any time race and minorities are bought up it turns into a shit fight. And im sorry to say guys but, if you dont want to hear the opinion from someone of a white majority then dont make the thread.