Being Black Is Detrimental to One's Mental Health: Myth or Reality?

Introduction The community mental health movement of the past few decades came about largely as a result of the realization that enormous disparities existed between psychiatric treatment provided to white Americans and that provided to the poor, the deprived, and the black. The charge of this paper is to look at the mental health of black Americans. Through an analysis of available data we shall try to determine if there has been a closing of the gaps in mental health status between blacks and whites, as we attempt to answer the question Is being black detrimental to one's mental health? Unfortunately, we encounter many difficulties in our :attempts to address this issue. Mental health data have not been routinely collected in a systematic way by race. Additionally, data which are available by race prior to quite recently are dichotomized by white-nonwhite. Even though we recognize that the various groups which comprise the nonwhite population are quite divergent, we have found it necessary to use these categories through much of this paper. There are problems in defining mental health. We shall be looking at differential patterns in the utilization of various types of mental health facilities by whites and blacks, along with results from community surveys measuring psychological problems, and patterns of physician utilization for emotional disorders all which could be construed more as measures of mental illness rather than of mental health.