Even though NEDAwareness Week has come and gone, I wanted to share this. Better late than never, am I right? These thoughts bobbed around my head throughout the week, but it was approximately midterm for me, so that meant my week was insanely busy and I had to prioritize what little sleep I got over getting these thoughts down on paper, so that’s my excuse.
The idea of privilege has been a huge part of my college life. It was all new to me when I first started here, and I struggled to see it and to believe that it was real. Three years later, I’m thankful for a campus which strives to ask hard questions about white privilege, racial reconciliation, social justice, and what we can do about it all. I don’t hope to take on the broader issue of social justice in one blog post, but I would like to explore thoughts about race and privilege in one small area: mental health.
I was fortunate.
- We have health insurance.
- My parents were able and willing to pay for me to receive treatment.
- Which also means that I had their support, and it was more than just financial.
- I had their emotional support as well, which vastly improves long-term outcomes.
- And I had transportation to treatment, and other resources needed to locate and access it.
The list could go on, but in short: I was just terribly fortunate.
I am also the stereotype.
And mental illness is stigmatized even for a stereotypical client like myself. But I did not struggle to find a therapist I identified with, one who looked like me and had a background similar to my own, one who understood my culture and my religion and me. So I was lucky, and there’s no way around that.
But so many others are not.
So many people out there are not only dealing with an incredibly hard illness, but they also are fighting an uphill battle to have that illness validated by professionals and friends alike and to have it properly treated.
I cannot imagine what that struggle is like, but I can share with my small audience on the internet that such a struggle exists. I know it exists because NEDA is talking about it. I know it exists because individual voices on social media are talking about it. And I know it exists because the scientific literature is talking about it.
I’ve read about the barriers to mental illness treatment faced by racial minorities as part of psychology classes I’ve taken. I just attended a psychology conference and while there heard an address which talked about these barriers. I had ethnic minority friends in high school whose parents laughed when they tried to voice that they were struggling with depression, saying, “Latinos don’t have these problems.”
Yet these individual’s struggles are no less severe nor are they less important or less valid because of the individual’s skin color. It’s scary to think that eating disorders go unnoticed because the individual is x ethnicity, and “x don’t get eating disorders.” That would be like saying, this can’t be diabetes or cancer or Crohn’s because white people don’t get diabetes or cancer or Crohn’s. These illnesses and diseases do not discriminate or care whether you are white or black or Asian or Latino or anything else, and neither do eating disorders or other mental illnesses.
We need to start talking about non-stereotypic presentations of eating disorders. We need these individuals to feel like they can start speaking for themselves. And we need to start listening to what they have to say.
A white individual’s eating disorder is valid. A black individual’s eating disorder is valid. A Latino/Latina individual’s eating disorder is valid. An Asian individual’s eating disorder is valid. An Islander or Native individual’s eating disorder is valid. And the list could go on for all of the other races and ethnicities out there.
I have been blessed with certain advantages in life, and I am still working on simply being thankful for that and not feeling guilty about it. I cannot change the family or race or country and religion I was born into; neither can anyone else.
I can advocate for and listen to and support people born into different circumstances than my own, though, and that is how the conversation will start to shift. So regardless of your life background, listen to others, especially others less fortunate than yourself. This is how the stigma will be broken and the playing field leveled. It won’t make treatment instantly attainable, but it’s a step, and it’s a step we can and should all play a part in.
Talk to people different from yourself. Genuinely hear what they have to say. Accept their story as valid. Change the conversation, one story and one person at a time.
For the purposes of this post, I focused only on the issue of marginalization in the mental health conversation due to race. Gender, sexual orientation, and religion can also be a reason someone is marginalized, and that needs to change too.
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