It isn’t unusual for racially marginalized people to feel like they walk away from therapy sessions feeling exhausted from recounting trauma that stems from experiencing racism- and being met with a mental health professional who, despite their credentials, is ill-equipped to support them in this work.
Or further traumatizes them with their own implicit biases.
According to the American Psychological Association, the vast majority of licensed psychologists in the US are white. Specifically, the racial/ethnic demographics are as follows:
-80.85% are white
-7.95% are Latine
-5.08% are Black or African American
-3.28% are Asian or Asian American
-2.68% are people of all other racial/ethnic groups
-.13% are Indigenous/Alaskan Native
-.03% are Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander
The lack of racial diversity present amongst psychologists in the US is compounded with the disparities in mental health access that racially marginalized communities in the US face. This is troubling because, according to the National Institute on Health, Black people are 20% more likely to experience anxiety or depression, yet 25% less likely to seek mental health assistance than a white person. Additionally, one in five Latine individuals in the US experiences mental illness, and suicide is the leading cause of death for Native Hawaiians aged 15 to 24.
The history of racial disparity in lack of access to mental health services is rooted in the acceptance amongst those who set the foundation for psychology as a science and a profession that Black and Brown people were baser humans than white people and, therefore, not in need of something as lofty as talk therapy. Racially marginalized people, in turn, perceived mental health struggles to be a luxury for white people who had the time and resources to “take to one’s bed”, so to speak, and not have to be focused on survival and meeting basic needs. If one were to view Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs with a racial equity lens, they could infer that, according to it, systemic racism could be deemed as a barrier to self-actualization.
Nevertheless, racially marginalized people of today who have access to mental health services may feel compelled to “make do” with what they can get, so to speak, with the recognition that something is better than nothing. However, attempting to engage in therapy with a mental health professional who is unskilled at supporting people who are negatively impacted by systemic racism can, unfortunately, render a racially marginalized patient vulnerable to that professional’s implicit biases and can cause more harm than good. With that in mind, here are three points of consideration a mental health professional needs to understand to be able to effectively support Black and Brown patients:
1. They need to understand racism causes trauma AND, that, if they are white, despite their “helper” credentials and training, they have benefitted from the oppression of Black and Brown people. If racially marginalized patients feel compelled to use their sessions to persuade the therapist to believe them then they are wasting their time and money. To put it bluntly, if you’re educating them THEY should be paying YOU, not you paying them.
2. They need to be able to work on their own internalized oppressor at the subconscious level or else they will become a “helping hand that strikes again” when working with individuals who have been traumatized by racism.
3. Mental health professionals, including those that are racially marginalized, need to understand that racism causes trauma and that trauma is a precursor to a variety of diagnoses recognized by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), including PTSD and cPTSD.
If a mental health professional cannot (or will not) understand these three points then they likely override, talk over, and outright dismiss their racially marginalized patients. This can look like frustration with Black and Brown patients for not “letting it go” when, in fact, they, the therapist, are personally experiencing feelings of discomfort or shame. They don’t necessarily realize (or refuse to do so) that, as the result of living in a system designed to oppress Black and Brown people for the benefit of white people, racially marginalized people have effectively been in an abusive relationship with society- which includes the mental health sector- their entire lives.
An abusive relationship that, again, if the mental health professional is white, they benefit from.
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