Depression: The African American Community’s Dirty Little Secret

Often undiagnosed or ignored, depression afflicts millions. Experts share advice on noticing the signs and confronting the problem: by Tomika Anderson

Like many of the estimated 19 million Americans suffering from some form of depression, Shanice Watson didn’t realize the crippling mental disorder had grabbed a hold of her until her world began falling apart. Once a six-figure corporate executive with an apartment in the heart of New York City, Watson has had to get by on mostly unemployment insurance since she found herself jobless in the wake of Wall Street’s collapse two years ago—her savings, IRA funds and other rainy-day accounts all but dried up.

Unable to continue paying rent on her nearly $2,000 a month one-bedroom apartment in midtown Manhattan, the 31-year-old now shares a place in Harlem with two roommates, something she has not done since her college days. “It’s been humbling,” she says.
Two weeks ago her boyfriend bowed out of their relationship, fractured, in part, by financial hardship. When he left, Watson couldn’t leave her bed—the latest hit in a domino effect of devastation that had become her life.

“There are days I don’t leave the house,” admits Watson, whose deep general malaise is compounded by Seasonal Affective Disorder, a type of depression that strikes her each year at the start of winter. She’s lost 10 pounds in the past year and a half and has started smoking again after kicking the habit for several months. She says she “drinks more than usual” and rarely frequents her favorite nightspots. Relationships with her girls have become strained because they don’t understand why their normally confident, upbeat friend doesn’t seek the help of a therapist or take antidepressants to diffuse the funk. But Dr. Elisa English—a mental health professional with a private practice in New York City—does.

Dr. English fights the stereotypes of depression in Black community:

“First, there’s the obvious—if you’re unemployed it’s very likely you feel you don’t have the health insurance necessary to help pay for these services,” says English, who reports more than half of her clients are unemployed or otherwise struggling financially. “Then, there’s the less obvious: Black people tend to have a lot of fears around medication. [This is the] residual effect of devastating studies like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, [a clinical study conducted on almost 400 unsuspecting Black men in Alabama to study the natural progression of the untreated STD]. We don’t trust White folks to medicate us unless it’s for something [tangible like] hypertension or diabetes, and many of us don’t trust White people, period—particularly around the issue of mental illness.”

And with White clinicians dominating the therapeutic community—English estimates less than two percent of all social workers and psychiatrists are African-American, out of 40 million—it’s no wonder more Black people aren’t opting to sit on a therapist’s couch. Still, English and public relations maven Terrie Williams, author of Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We’re Not Hurting, insists neither money nor a potential therapist’s skin color should ever be a deterrent to getting the help you need.

“There are actually a considerable number of free services for high-risk groups like [school-age] children and women, ages 20-40, particularly in major cities,” explains English. (Men are less likely to seek help for their depression, she says, so there’s less data—and consequently—specialized services for them.) “For example, in New York City [you] can contact the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene to get screened for depression and to get help in [learning how to manage it].”

Williams, also a licensed clinical social worker who was diagnosed with depression herself in 2004, insists that a good mental health professional—Black or White—is better than none at all. “You can have a Black therapist who may not understand you as well as a White one,” she says, warning against stereotyping. “I once sent a gang member to speak to Dr. David Grand—a White therapist I love—and after he talked to David he cried… he had a total breakthrough,” she says. “David helped him understand he wasn’t crazy—he was just suffering from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. It’s not just the veterans, you know—we’re at war in our streets every day.”

This warfare, Williams says, is often internal and historical: the result of unresolved childhood trauma around poverty, fatherlessness and other common “community” ills, manifesting in violence, crime, drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, workaholism and shopping, gambling and sex addictions. “We do not mourn that our daddies are not in our lives,” says Williams of the estimated 92% of Black households run by single mothers. She says millions of Black people are depressed over this critical issue and others, not realizing it. “Children experience this as the ultimate rejection and no one ever explains to them where that empty feeling comes from. If you’ve never talked about it, mourned it or even acknowledged it, how do you work through it?”

Many Black men often deal with depression quietly
That is why the celebrity P.R. rep, who says she keeps a bottle of the antidepressant medicine Clonazepam handy for when the blues hits, is a huge advocate of “talk therapy.” This, in spite of the argument Williams gets from many Black folks—particularly those in the church—who insist God is the only one who can take away their pain. “I tell them it was God who led me to the right psychiatrist,” she says. “He puts angels in our lives to help us do what we’re called to do.”
Williams encourages anyone suffering from an inability to sleep, eat, or enjoy their favorite activities for more than a couple of weeks to put aside any fears of being labeled “weak” and seek professional help. Being physically fit and working out can prove beneficial in building mental fortitude as well.

“People sometimes think I am a little overzealous about life-coaching, therapy and counseling,” she says, “but I think it’s essential for us to say it out loud, ‘I hurt.’ It’s so incredibly freeing. It’s not just the unresolved childhood trauma pain, either—it’s the stuff that happens to us on a day-to-day basis. The stuff you don’t recognize is hurting you until you sit down and talk about it. Write in a journal, talk to a friend, call a hotline—do anything you have to do, just give voice to it. Only then will the pain start to go away.”

Need help? There are several resources that can assist you:

Online depression resources

National Institute of Mental Health

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255