Minority Mental Health Awareness Month: Some of the issues and needs connected to and with.

GWENDOLYN DOWNING 7/4/221:57 PM

Hi. Let me note, that while much could be written, I am keeping this short.

This link goes to the Office of Minority Health (OMH)’s page for National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month (observed in July) https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov...ority-mental-health/

Here are some of the issues:

The official name is actually, Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, which is not on the landing page; and that history is significant.
There is the office’s name of, “Minority”, which is neither appropriate nor necessarily accurate to their stated mission: “The Office of Minority Health is dedicated to improving the health of racial and ethnic minority populations through the development of health policies and programs that will help eliminate health disparities.”
- We know using the term “minority” depersonalizes identities.
- While the data is what it is, from the most recent data reports and projections I can find, considering non-white race and ethnicity as “minority” in the US, we see either:
  - If some of the concerns about the 2020 census data are correct, we may already be where non-white race and ethnicity are not a minority.
  - Or, the projections are, that isn’t too far in the future, from that not being accurate.
- Then we also know that there are other groups (within and without the identified group), who in the spirit of the month, need to be included.

Then, switching, there are the very real needs to create understanding, destigmatize, or/and increase access to services with or/and for those this month is intended to impact. … And, today, I’m not going to outline any necessary steps (including addressing the above), I’m going to be transparent. I don’t understand why we aren’t already where we should be, why any individual isn’t given all that they need; and I am not limiting that to mental health, I mean all their needs. Knowing the reality of our interconnection, it is completely illogical we aren’t doing all we can. Which is part of why I have my initiative, Connect All, so that we do start doing all we can. We must address the root sources of why we aren’t already doing what is needed, while doing what is needed.

In closing, because it is necessary, I will find a way to appropriately advocate and do my part with/for those this month is intended to impact in the way it is meant to; as I also do all I can for the much bigger and needed.

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Frank Sterle Jr.Member

In regards to the males within the minority communities, there remains too much platitudinous lip-service when it comes to proactive mental illness prevention as well as treatment.

Various mainstream news and social media will state the obvious, that society must open up its collective minds and common dialogue when it comes to far more progressively addressing the challenge of more fruitfully treating and preventing such illness in general.

But they will typically fail to address the problem of ill men, or even boys, refusing to open up and/or ask for help due to their fear of being perceived by peers, etcetera, as weak/non-masculine. The social ramifications exist all around us; indeed, it is endured, however silently, by males of/with whom we are aware/familiar or to whom so many of us are closely related.

Even today, there remains a mentality, albeit perhaps a subconscious one: Men can take care of themselves, and boys often are basically little men. It could be the same mentality that might help explain why the book Childhood Disrupted was only able to include one man among its six interviewed adult subjects, there presumably being such a small pool of ACE-traumatized men willing to formally tell his own story of childhood abuse. Yet more evidence of a continuing subtle societal take-it-like-a-man mindset, one in which so many men will choose to abstain from ‘complaining’ about their torturous youth, as that is what ‘real men’ do.

Without doubt, writes the author of The Highly Sensitive Man (2019, Tom Falkenstein, Ch.1), ‘real-man’ conformity stubbornly remains. There are “numerous psychological studies over the last forty years that tell us that, despite huge social change, the stereotypical image of the ‘strong man’ is still firmly with us at all ages, in all ethnic groups, and among all socio-economic backgrounds. In the face of problems, men tend not to seek out emotional or professional help from other people. They use, more often than women, alcohol or drugs to numb unpleasant feelings and, in crises, tend to try to deal with things on their own, instead of searching out closeness or help from others.

“While it is true that a higher percentage of women than men will be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or a depressive episode, the suicide rate among men is much higher. In the United States, the suicide rate is notably higher in men than in women. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, men account for 77 percent of the forty-five thousand people who kill themselves every year in the United States.

“In fact, men commit suicide more than women everywhere in the world. Men are more likely to suffer from addiction, and when men discuss depressive symptoms with their doctor, they are less likely than women to be diagnosed with depression and consequently don't receive adequate therapeutic and pharmacological treatment. ...

“This is backed up by numerous psychological studies over the last forty years that tell us that, despite huge social change, the stereotypical image of the ‘strong man’ is still firmly with us at all ages, in all ethnic groups, and among all socio-economic backgrounds. In the face of problems, men tend not to seek out emotional or professional help from other people. They use, more often than women, alcohol or drugs to numb unpleasant feelings and, in crises, tend to try to deal with things on their own, instead of searching out closeness or help from others.”

7/5/225:27 PM

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