Mental Health in the African Community
I just want to start off this post by acknowledging and recognizing that I only speak for myself and my life experiences. I am not representative of all of Africa, but I’m generalizing my experiences to be more relateable to others.
When I think of African culture, more specifically Nigerian culture, certain things come to mind. God first. Education second. Marriage third. Keep problems to yourself. We truly embody immigrant mentality: you have goals, achieve them. Don’t let anything distract you, including your mental health.
I witness many students of color, especially students of immediate Africa origin come to college to get away from whatever trauma they had back home. They get to college, but can’t even focus on their education because they are dealing with mental health issues that arose due to the trauma. Then have to put their education on hold, the school tries to force them to take a leave of absence, but these students can’t and don’t want to go back to their source of trauma. So they’re stuck and left to deal with school while trying to stay alive. To what extent is it possible to seek mental health services and be a full time student? I will be the first to say that Stanford does not care about the mental health their students.
Growing up, I’ve been through so much, yet if you were to ask me if I’ve experienced trauma, I’d say no. Why? Because we are raised to normalize events of trauma. When something in your culture is seemingly so frequent it becomes normal, you’d don’t even want to acknowledge that trauma because then you feel weak. Actions and words of community and family members reaffirm the belief that you didn’t go through anything serious. We are raised not to speak up, not to seek help and in turn we become uncomfortable with the idea of sharing our struggles with others.
I wrote a paper (a very long one) on this topic. I was taking the course, Media Representations of Africa taught by a very handsome french guy (lol), and our final paper required us to explore an aspect of African media. I, being a pre med, decided to write about media representation of mental illness in Nollywood (Nigeria’s movie industry). I talked a lot about how in the Yoruba movies I watched characters who exhibited schizophrenia like traits, were labeled and treated as “mad men”. Our movies say a lot about the culture and society we live in. I wrote about how as a culture, Nigeria has a long way to go with mental health. We don’t take it seriously, we don’t see it as a medical condition. Instead, when a family member or loved one starts acting “crazy” or “abnormal” we take them to church or the mosque. We assumed that they need deliverance and prayers. Don’t get me wrong -- I think faith is crucial in one’s healing, however some people need faith as well as medical attention.
On the other hand, I can’t even say mental health care is where it needs to be because there are a lot of culturally incompetent therapists and psychiatrists out there. If you can’t find adequate support and care from loved one and medical professions, of course you’re going to keep everything bottled up. This is exactly why I am a strong supporter of increasing minority representation in medicine. We need more people of color treating people of color. My experience with therapy became beautiful when I found a Ghanaian psychiatrist, because she understood me. She understood the culture I was coming from, she understood why I have certain beliefs, she understood how in some ways my culture and upbringing was an obstacle to my healing. She understood, I could trust her because of that.
We are raised to believe that mental health is not a real thing, but it is. The beginning of healing starts when you recognize that your emotions and mental state matter.
