Mental Health Disparities Among African-American Youth
Comparable to their adult counterparts, African-American adolescents experience mental health disparities. The primary reasons for this are discrimination, inadequate treatment, and underutilization of mental health services. Similarly, children of immigrants, or second-generation Americans, often encounter barriers to optimal mental well-being. Discrimination and its effects on mental health are evident in adolescents’ ability to achieve in school and overall self-esteem. Researchers are unable to pinpoint exact causes for African-American teenagers’ underutilization of mental health services. One study attributed this to using alternative methods of support instead of formal treatments. Moreover, Black youth described other means of support, such as peers and spiritual leaders. This demonstrates that African-American teens are uncomfortable disclosing personal matters to formal supports. It is difficult to decipher if this is cultural or a youth-related issue, as most teens do not choose to access formal supports for their mental health needs.
Read more about this topic: Mental Distress
Famous quotes containing the words mental health, mental, health, disparities and/or youth:
“Mental health data from the 1950’s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isn’t surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow’s feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“Children and savages use only nouns or names of things, which they convert into verbs, and apply to analogous mental acts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The sick man is taken away by the institution that takes charge not of the individual, but of his illness, an isolated object transformed or eliminated by technicians devoted to the defense of health the way others are attached to the defense of law and order or tidiness.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)
“Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)