EurekAlert, DC (US)
15th Sept. '03
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Mental health professionals may be missing at least five novel mental health problems because the impact of racism is not considered when determining mental health, a new report suggests.
Tony N. Brown, Vanderbilt University assistant professor of sociology, asserts in the report that standard mental health criteria may fail to capture a true picture of problems across racial groups. That failure in turn, leads to some psychological problems going unclassified and undiagnosed.
"We don't know what is deviant if we don't know what the norm is and the norm is dictated by society's beliefs, which vary across racial groups.
For example, the black community may question the sanity of blacks who bleach their skin or blacks who 'hate being black,' but these lay definitions of poor mental health are ignored by mental health professionals," Brown said.
"Combining lay and clinical definitions and considering racism's impact on mental health could offer a more complete picture of mental health disorders," Brown added.
The report, "Critical Race Theory Speaks to the Sociology of Mental Health: Mental Health Problems Produced by Racial Stratification," appears in the September edition of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior published by the American Sociological Association.
Mental health research has hinted that a complex relationship between racism and mental health exists – but the link has not yet been fully explored.
Full text at:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-09/vu-orm091503.php
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