MENTAL ILLNESS: MISCONCEPTIONS OF IT BEING A WHITE MANS DISEASE

Community outreach on mental health prevention is a job most sociologists and criminologists do. Their work is to urge organizations and community programs in many ways to how mental health issues does impact individuals of different stature i.e. Race, gender, religion, etc.

It has been found that mental health is conditioned as a white person’s problem as African Americans and Hispanics are often overlooked by the mental health community. However, studies show that whites make a majority of people with mental and suicide rates of the total Unites States population by more than seventy percent.

There is a common misconception with the African-American community as they always label people with the disorder as either crazy and are less likely to acknowledge and visit health facilities to seek to help this despite culture support systems put in place all over the country to help with this issue. These, therefore, leaves health facilities helping white people.

Data shows that the suicide rate stands at 18.5% per a hundred thousand people who lead with the highest total number of suicides for any racial group in the states. It has also been noted that they also comprise the majority subscribed to suicide prevention organizations and have more quick access to the resources needed. Only about thirteen percent of the state population of black people make up in the suicide data as they only had six percent of the registered recorded rates compared to white people.

It is, however, not clear how this data has been reached onto as historically, Racial Americans i.e. Hispanic, blacks, have more suicide classifications than white people. Researchers believe that this problem may be determined to the coroner’s misclassification of death as either homicide or the families wish not recording the truthful occurrences which leave data at the local, state and national level unfinished.

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Studies have shown that there has been a slight number of suicides misclassified which, however, varies by culture or demographics. Attitude is also a major factor which explains why suicide data is incomplete among African-American people. The number one cause recorded by criminologists on the causes of death to African-American people is homicide which are deaths classified by law enforcers as accidental.

Research has shown that most of the black community members between the ages of 18-35 fear seeking help as society has taught them to grow by hiding their feelings and expressing bad emotions through violence. American Indians and Alaskan natives also tend to suffer from alienation and have less access to health facilities. Data input shows how wrong these people were with white native speaking Americans since both the Alaskan and the American Indians had the highest rate per a hundred thousand people. There is a need for mental and other organizational programs to reach these underserved groups as the majority of these groups do not design services to cater to the minority groups.

It is vital to these programs growing up daily to offer more specialized services rather than discriminating and creating programs for minority people. Health should be neutral and not segregated. Changing the structure of how these programs are developed should be the focus of reducing the number of people affected and also encouraging the communities by changing their cultural beliefs to this disorder.

Source: www.stlamerican.com