By Dianne Anderson

Suicide rising among Black boys and men is a hard conversation to have, seemingly harder if the answer requires more money to Black organizations to provide community-based resources, and the political will to get it done.

Mental health providers are calling on community participation to shed light on some of the reasons why suicide is ticking up in the Black community, as the number of white suicide is decreasing.

Health advocate Linda Hart said many high-profile cases in the entertainment industry are sounding the alarm on a serious issue that has been unfolding in the Black community over the past decade.

She said more targeted help is needed to stop the tragic trend.

Last summer, Hart publicly expressed concerns at a San Bernardino County Behavioral Health Commission Meeting over why Mental Health Services Act Prevention and Early Intervention funding outreach was hardly reaching the Black community.

Hart, founder and CEO of the African American Health Coalition, questioned the low number mental health presentations conducted for the Black community in the county. She said the answer was 1%. With a huge amount of funding pouring down for mental health in recent years, she said the community needs more than simple brochures.

“I asked why it’s not addressed, in my opinion 99% didn’t get served,” she said. “They said it was the pandemic, but I see others succeed in vulnerable times – ours included in Riverside county, were successful.”

Hart reaches about 1,500 annually with unduplicated contacts in Riverside County’s Black community where she holds in-person mental health presentations. But in San Bernardino County where she lives, and in areas across the state, she said the Black community is estranged from outreach workers who look like them.

Part of her focus this year is reaching families for multi-generational impact. She commended Riverside County for taking strong steps to support racially relevant programs, and MSA funds and RFP process for all communities.

“They’ve even added outreach for the new immigrants coming in, which I thought was awesome,” Hart, who works with Riverside University Health Systems, Behavioral Health Prevention and Early Intervention.

Set tentatively for the second week of February, she is hosting a panel of Black psychologists and psychiatrists to address increased suicide. She is also calling on survivors and women to come and share recommendations for what they feel is needed to address barriers to services.

Hart works with RUHealth serving western, mid-county and desert regions as a community mental health promoter, covering depression, anxiety and suicide prevention in the Black community.

“It needs to be addressed, we’re talking about individual lives. It should not mean that you receive less services or attention because of the color of your skin.”

Dean Chambers has presented in Hart’s initial “Beautiful Black Man” series on mental wellness, and he is concerned about the factors surrounding the increase in Black suicides.

Chambers, a clinical social worker focused on cognitive therapy, said suicide ideation or fantasizing about suicide is a serious issue, but most people do not follow through, but it’s the actual suicides that are growing and devastating.

It is the second leading cause of death for Black youth and men 15-24, and a serious increase between ages 10 and 19.

For the Black community, he feels it’s the stress of multiple systems of structural racism, such as what Black youth and men have to go through to get the job, and keep the job.

“We might be in the office and hear that a white coworker got the job, and got more money than we’re getting and we have a better education. I think most Black professionals have dealt with that,” he said.

Demonizing Black men is another issue. He recalls working on a research paper under professor Dr. Angela Davis, about the 1920s when the government wanted to stamp out cocaine use. They did it by associating Black men with snorting the drug, and raping white women.

“We always have to deal with this corrosive image. We’ve always been the boogie man, “ he said. “We can always be scapegoated, Black men and African Americans in general..”

Not being able to readily access Black health professionals is another barrier. Typically, he said Black people don’t come in for help until the pain is unbearable because of racialized doctor visits.

Numerous studies show bias in healthcare, and that when Black people go for help, doctors are less likely to believe they are in pain,” he said.

“It’s very common, you see that in research all the time, that when we go to doctors and complain of pain, we’re less likely to get medication.”

That same disconnect exists in the arena of mental health, where he said providers expect Blacks should be able to shoulder the burden of daily micro-aggressions.

“[They say] this is part of what you deal with in the community, so what’s the problem? Or they superimpose all these Eurocentric concepts on us about what we need to do,” he said.

But what works in other communities to improve mental health, such as the back to nature movement, doesn’t work well in the Black community. It’s not an aversion to nature, but fear of white supremacy while venturing too far out to outlying small-town communities.

“For us, nature typifies a place of trauma, growing up in the south where people would never want to go out in the country, and get out of the car look around. It triggers them, we can’t relax in the woods,” he said.

Last summer, before the 988 crisis suicide hotline went live, the Kaiser Family Foundation released its findings, that nearly one-half million people, over 480,000, died by suicide from 2010 to 2020.

The organization reports that suicide death rates increased substantially among people of color between 2010 and 2020, with the highest increase among Black people, at 43% increase, followed by increases with American Indian at 41%, and Hispanic at 27%.

Citing one study in Scientific American, KFF notes a large increase in suicide deaths among Black youth and adolescents.

“Underdiagnosis of mental health conditions, structural barriers to care, stereotypes and discrimination associated with poor mental health, racism and discrimination, and disparities in the use of mental health services may all contribute to rising suicide rates among people of color. In rural areas, suicide death rates increased significantly, possibly due to acute shortages of mental health workers in these areas,” the KFF study said.

For more information on the event, contact Linda Hart at hartl.aamhc@gmail.com

or see https://theaamhc.org/

For anyone needing mental health help, call 988.

https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/988