Soul Work: Depression Amongst African American Women

While most students joined fraternities and sororities, established friendships and enjoyed the college life at Tennessee State University, Veronica Grayson*, 22, of Chicago, felt alone. Grayson’s friends transferred schools at the conclusion of freshman year. With a fear of not being accepted, Grayson found it difficult to make new friends and she felt alone.

Junior year, Grayson returned home, transferring to the University of Illinois-Chicago. Being home brought comfort, but her troubles didn’t cease. With a lack of black student organizations on campus, Grayson felt sorority life was the only way to make friends, but fear of acceptance, again, worried her.

“I’m the new girl, everyone has friends, and I’m trying to make friends,” Grayson states. “I was scared of having to put myself in situations where people had to decide if they liked me, so I decided to be alone.”

Isolating herself from her peers, Grayson became overwhelmed with loneliness and began to care less about her life. She abandoned her friends and withdrew from her environment, two signs of clinical depression.

Nearly 20 million Americans suffer from depression each year. African-American women are affected more than any other group in the U.S. In 2009, the National Alliance on Mental Illness reported that only 12 percent of African-American women receive treatment for their depression, the number one cause of suicides in this country. So why aren’t more African-American women receiving treatment? Some aren’t knowledgeable of depression’s symptoms, but for those who are and acknowledge that they’re depressed, a stigma within the African-American community prevents them from seeking treatment. This same stigma is responsible for the scarce research and lack of formal statistics on depression amongst African-American women, as many are unwilling to participate in research studies.

“When I first began my practice, I wondered who would come talk to me,” says Lasonda Wilkins-Hines, 40, of Chicago. Wilkins-Hines is an African-American licensed social worker specializing in depression and runs a private practice, Soul Work, in the Bronzeville neighborhood. “We come from a culture where we need to be strong as African-American women and it’s been passed down for generations that you suck it up or you talk to the pastor.”

The African-American community, women in particular, associates weakness with those in need of mental health treatment. “Black women tend to present themselves to society as strong, resilient human beings,” says Texas-based psychologist Dr. Yolanda Brooks in the Women Enews October 2001 article Lives of Women of Color Create Risk of Depression. In my opinion, you can trace this dynamic back to slavery, when a woman had to pretend she was okay when she was actually suffering inside.” This stereotype has been perpetuated in many books and movies, such as Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls and Gloria Naylor’s Women of Brewster Place, and has rooted itself in the African-American community.

As a psychology student, Grayson’s studies have taught her to recognize the signs of her depression. Still, Grayson didn’t receive treatment right away in fear of being stigmatized. “Once you reveal that you deviate from the norm, you no longer can go back to that,” says Grayson. “No one is going to look at you as the healthy person you are now, they’re going to remember that you were mentally ill.”

Grayson’s depression began as a sophomore at TSU and carried on with her after transferring to UIC in January of 2010. She recalls her lowest point in mid March where she felt her life didn’t matter. “Because I was so isolated,” she recalls, “I felt that if I lock myself in this room, because I don’t have any friends, no ones going to come looking for me because no one cares. So what am I doing here?” it was Grayson’s wakeup call.

“I don’t believe in suicide and it was getting to where that was the only thing that could come next. So in order to prevent something like that from happening, I decided it was time to go talk to somebody.”

Wilkins-Hines identifies the number one reason for seeking treatment with depression is because it can lead to suicide. “Sometimes our hormonal levels get so low that we start to rationalize suicide, like it’s our only way out. It gives us a sense of peace.”

Grayson scheduled an appointment with the school’s psychologist and immediately began treatment. “A lot of times we’re stuck with the burden of situations and trying to overcome them on our own because that’s how we were reared,” says Wilkins-Hines. “You have to be crazy to see a therapist. They [African American women] don’t understand that everyday people struggling with everyday issues seek therapy as well.”

Receiving treatment can combat other issues brought on by depression, such as its interference in our daily lives. “We aren’t able to get up and go to work and be productive, we aren’t able to be as involved with our children and we aren’t able to be as attentive to our husbands because we’re in a state where we want to be isolative and alone,” explains Wilkins-Hines. She also emphasizes that no one has to live this way. “It’s not acceptable to walk around unhappy and miserable and to feel like you have this weight on your shoulders not knowing what to do about it,” she adds.

Indeed, seeking treatment helped to lift a great burden off Grayson’s shoulders. Through the use of talk therapy and a number of activities, Grayson addressed what was going on in her life and how to change it. “She gave me a course of actions to get myself back on track such as and really helped a lot,” says Grayson of her psychologist. “I was able to get my grades back together before the end of the school year and I was able to keep my problems under wraps because I had better control over them.”

A number of campaigns address depression and many resources are made available to treat the mental disorder. “I get more middle class professionals that come to therapy,” says Wilkins-Hines. “White people have therapists like they have a hair dresser. They aren’t ashamed of it because they understand that emotional health is as important as physical health where as we think its taboo.”

Until the stigma affecting the African-American community is overcome and eliminated, it will continue to jeopardize the mental health of African-American women across the country. “We need to educate and normalize it,” suggests Wilkins-Hines. “We need to make people aware that depression is something everyone may experience in their lifetime. I myself have experienced it.”

Today Grayson describes her depression as being in remission and is actively involved on campus, most recently lending her fashion expertise to style participants of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated’s Miss Black and Gold Scholarship Pageant. She’ll be graduating this fall with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and nursing with plans to be a nurse practitioner. Grayson’s favorite pastime however is visiting various boutiques around the city and blogging about the latest fashion trend. “I broke the idea that you have to be ashamed of seeing a doctor,” Grayson says. “There are black women that don’t get help and I did.” Hopefully more African-American women will choose to the same as the awareness of depression is spread into the black community.

Breathing in Second-Hand Smoke Can Cause Mental Illness

Did you know more than 60 percent of children, ages 3 to 11-years-old are exposed to second-hand smoke? The affects of second-hand smoke may be damaging to their mental health as it has been linked to cause anxiety, ADHD, and depression.In a recent study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, researchers looked at nearly 3,000 children, ages 8 to 15. They examined the affects of second-hand smoke by measuring the amount of continie in the child's system. Cotinie is a chemical made from nicotine found in cigarette smoke that shows how much cigarette smoke enters the body. The children were also given a questionnaire from the National Institute of Mental Health's Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children to see what current mental disorders they possessed.

After the study was conducted, the researchers found that higher levels of continine were linked to symptoms of emotional/behavioral problems such as generalized anxiety disorder, ADHD, conduct disorder, and major depressive disorder.

Los Angeles Times reports, "none of those symptoms added up to a single diagnosis of a mental health disorder that could be linked with exposure to second-hand smoke in the children and teens in the study." The authors of the study agreed that a child's psychiatric history is not controlled. Even still, this research increases evidence that second-hand smoke negatively affects a child's health. It has been shown that second-hand smoke increases the risk of stillbirth and congenital birth defects in nonsmoking pregnant women according to Time Magazine.

full story

State of Depression

Couples looking to adopt are generally evaluated to ensure that they are ready to take on the responsibility of parenthood.This is done to guarantee that the well-being of a child will be met. But what happens when it isn’t the home or the adoptive parents that negatively impacts a child? What happens when it is the environment in which they reside that does?

According to Dr. Abbie Goldberg of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and Julianna Smith, states with anti-gay adoption laws and attitudes are more detrimental to the well-being of a child adopted by a same-sex couple than that child being raised by a same-sex couple in general. This is because same-sex adoptive parents residing in "homophobic" states are more likely to develop mental health issues within the first year of parenthood than those residing in states that are more accepting of same-sex couple adoptions. 

Although other studies show that heterosexual couples too experience an increase in depression and anxiety in early parenthood, Goldberg states that these parents usually recover. Ninety same-sex couples, 52 lesbian and 38 gay males, were studied by Goldberg and Smith during their first year of being adoptive parents. The study found that gay and lesbian adoptive parents living in states with unfavorable laws of gay adoption had an increase in symptoms of depression and anxiety. These high levels of depression and anxiety do notonly affect the couples, but they could also negatively affect their children as well, especially if there are not supportive workplaces, families, and neighborhoods.

Goldberg and Smith’s study found that same-sex couples with adopted children living in an environment where their family and workplaces were more accepting of same-sex couple adoption had better mental health than those that did not. This means that the well-being of their adoptive children was better protected. My question is: if the state is to provide a safe environment for all of its citizens, how can it possess laws discriminative and detrimental to the well-being of its citizens, and worse, their children? Goldberg and Smith’s study is the first to look at lesbian and gay mental health among new adoptive parents, but how many more must be conducted before something is done to resolve the matter? Time will tell.

Warning: Anti-Gay States May be Hazardous to Your Health

- Lynencia Elliott

Photo by Emma Watters

Female Asian-American Teens Have Highest Rates of Depression New Study Says

A recent study released yesterday by the National Alliance on Mental Illness reported that Asian-American Pacific Islander female youth have the highest rates of depressive symptoms out of any other ethnic group.

 The study also found that female AAPIs between the ages of 15 and 24 are more likely to die from suicide, and that suicide is the top cause of death among Asian-American women that are 65 years of age or older.  Additionally, NAMI found that 71 percent of Southeast Asian women are more likely to suffer from disorders such as depression.

The findings are based on a November 2010 listening session that was hosted by NAMI's Multicultural Center in Los Angeles. The use of social media, ambassadors, and cultural messages were some solutions offered in the research study.

One of the reasons why suicide is so high among the global Asian community comes from the importance of the family unit over the individual. This is especially important to address since in the U.S. there is oftentimes a clash between family honor and personal freedom among APIs and their immigrant parents.

The Asian-American community must teach love and constructive criticism to their children. Public figures such as Amy Chua who continue to encourage the notion of  tough love and emotional abuse, continues the vicious connection to the high rates of suicide among the Asian-American community. Her new book called "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" states that there is nothing wrong with shaming and verbally humiliating their children on a regular basis in order for them to do well in life.

It is important for Asian-American activists and mental health programs to promote outreach resources. However, AAPIS must also reconsider the old ways and that depression does not make one crazy - it is okay to ask for help when it is needed.

- Theresa Campagna

Photo by National Alliance on Mental Illness

Lincoln: the poet, the depressed, the president

Abraham Lincoln’s melancholy is a well-known modern fact. In 2006 Joshua Wolf Shenk brought Lincoln’s depression in the spot light when he wrote "Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness.” It’s a book that addresses Lincoln’s enduring sadness and how it affected his presidency.  Lincoln’s depression was so powerful that even modern scholars, who lack psychiatry training, diagnosed him with clinical depression. A not-so-well known fact, though, is that Lincoln was a poet. Below is Lincoln’s poem, “The Suicide’s Soliloquy.”

Here, where the lonely hooting owl

Sends forth his midnight moans,

Fierce wolves shall o’er my carcass growl,

Or buzzards pick my bones.

No fellow-man shall learn my fate,

Or where my ashes lie;

Unless by beasts drawn round their bait,

Or by the ravens’ cry.

Yes! I’ve resolved the deed to do,

And this the place to do it:

This heart I’ll rush a dagger through,

Though I in hell should rue it!

Hell! What is hell to one like me

Who pleasures never know;

By friends consigned to misery,

By hope deserted too?

To ease me of this power to think,

That through my bosom raves,

I’ll headlong leap from hell’s high brink,

And wallow in its waves.

Though devils yell, and burning chains

May waken long regret;

Their frightful screams, and piercing pains,

Will help me to forget.

Yes! I’m prepared, through endless night,

To take that fiery berth!

Think not with tales of hell to fright

Me, who am damn’d on earth!

Sweet steel! come forth from our your sheath,

And glist’ning, speak your powers;

Rip up the organs of my breath,

And draw my blood in showers!

I strike! It quivers in that heart

Which drives me to this end;

I draw and kiss the bloody dart,

My last—my only friend!

Only a poet deep-seeded in misery could write something so powerful. So the question I put forth is: what if Lincoln was medicated? Lincoln’s greatness is equal to his sadness, so if one was to become lower would the other follow suit?

Lincoln is a good example of the power that depression can wield. It is my opinion that Abraham Lincoln would not be an American hero without his depression. This was his motivation. He, like many artists, sought out knowledge to fill his empty heart. There is a saying my poetry teacher once taught me, “Keeping your mind high on knowledge will stop your heart from sinking.” With all my heart I believe this to be true. Lincoln is not the only great statesman to battle with mental illness. Winston Churchill also suffered from depression that caused him to drink excessively. What would happen if he was medicated?

I want to iterate that I am not condemning medication for depression. I think depression medications  help people to enjoy a better quality of life and in my opinion, it is not always bad. Sometimes depression can lead people to do great things. To everyone who feels lamentation and drowns themselves in sorrow, ask yourself: "Is my depression worsening the type of person I am or bettering it? Am I happy with that?"

The truth is we will never know what type of person Lincoln would be if he was medicated for his melancholy. A lot of his true personality is up for debate. Despite Mr. Shenk’s insightful perspective, I believe the poet Carl Sandburg described Lincoln best in his poem “The People, Yes,”

Lincoln?

He was a mystery in smoke and flags

Saying yes to the smoke, yes to the flags,

Yes to the paradoxes of democracy,

Yes to the hopes of government

Of the people by the people for the people,

No to debauchery of the public mind,

No to personal malice nursed and fed,

Yes to the Constitution when a help,

No to the Constitution when a hindrance

Yes to man as a struggler amid illusions,

Each man fated to answer for himself:

Which of the faiths and illusions of mankind

Must I choose for my own sustaining light

To bring me beyond the present wilderness?

     Lincoln? Was he a poet?

     And did he write verses?

“I have not willingly planted a thorn

     in any man’s bosom.”

I shall do nothing through malice: what

     I deal with is too vast for malice.”

Death was in the air.

So was birth.

-Matthew Harriett-

The Depression Gene

        The scientific community has long been debating genetics’ effect on depression. Researchers at the University of Michigan have presented evidence that genes do effect our susceptibility to depression. 

Their motivation was to finally debunk the rumors and present hard evidence. The dilemma began in 2003 when scientists discovered there is a connection between genes and the neurotransmitter seratonin. In 2009 however, the research was called into question and the results were deemed inexact and incomplete.

Using a broader analysis individual genetic makeup and thousands of participants later, the results were conclusive. Srijan Sen, M.D., Ph.D at U-M reports that a person’s genetic makeup makes a difference in how we respond to stress. Long story short, it comes down to the length of an allele. A short allele means the serotonin gene a has a harder time bouncing back from trauma. 

What does this research mean? Science is one step closer to mapping an individual’s genetic profile for depression. With this research it may be possible to treat depression at an early stage, and develop specific treatment options. Everyone responds to stress in different ways. 

Most of all, this research will decrease the concern about the genetic connection of depression. Scientists can return their focus on  advancements that treat depression. 

Check out the ScienceDaily article.

- Emma Watters

Recent Increase of Suicides Inspires Suicide Prevention Program For Asian-Americans

A recent University of Washington study shows almost 16 percent of all U.S.-born Asian-American women have considered suicide, compared to 13 percent of all Americans. Additionally, the 2009 study found that U.S.-born Asian-American women are more likely to attempt suicide.

In light of this, and 2010 suicides at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and other college campuses, the Asian Cultural House hosted a suicide prevention program on Jan. 25. Coordinator Sean Cheng said the program's purpose was to let the public know that suicide nationally is the second-leading cause of death among college-age students, and at the university a large number of suicides are Asian students.

''I would say it’s not something that is news to us here at the Counseling Center. We’ve been aware that this is an issue,” he said. “And it’s more that the national spotlight has been on recent suicides. Might as well use that as a time to get the message across.”

Additionally, the program was designed to reach out to Asian-Americans – and emphasize the importance of using campus resources such as the university's counseling center, mental health facilities, resident advisers, or mentors to name a few. Cheng said that Asian-Americans do not seek help when in distress.


One reason might be living up to the model minority stereotype, which according to scholars is defined as those who are more likely to set a high standard for achievement in comparison to other minorities, and in turn are more likely to be over-achievers. The New York Times defines it as an ''...image of Asian-Americans as a homogeneous group of high achievers taking over the campuses of the nation’s most selective colleges..''

In an October PBS interview, practitioner Dr. Shinhee Han said, ''Often times I have clients whose parents were absent growing up, working nonstop, and telling their kids to study no matter what their family was going through. Many children grew up in a house filled with sadness and too little laughter.”

Despite this, the suicide prevention program said that it is okay to seek help because the University of Illinois is a community.

The nonprofit, To Write Love On Her Arms was also present at the program.  One of its main goals as an organization is to decrease the stigma behind openly discussing mental health topics such as depression and suicide. It also has an outreach program for those struggling with such issues.


 There needs to be more programs like this for not just the Asian-American student population, but for all students in college, given the recent increase in suicides on campuses nationwide. Furthermore, university funding should be set aside to provide a resource center, a safe haven for Asian American students to healthily de-stress and bond with other Asian-American students.

- Theresa Campagna

More information on To Write Love On Her Arms can be found here.