More disturbing are the traditional explanations for why these inequities exist in the first place. The list of inequities in mental health goes on and on. Transgender youth have higher rates of suicide than cisgender youth.
Indigenous populations have higher rates of alcohol use disorder than other populations, and Black people are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, labeled as hostile and loaded up on high doses of antipsychotic medication than white people.
A majority of Black and Latinx adults with mental health problems do not have access to treatment, and almost 90 percent of Black and Latinx adults who have substance use disorders in the U.S. We recently observed this system at work with the differential law enforcement response to the attack of mostly white insurrectionists on the Capitol building compared to the crackdown on Black Lives Matter protesters last year.Īs two Black women psychiatrists, in a field in which just 2 percent of all psychiatrists are black, we are repeatedly confronted with a disturbing trend in how the mental health system in the United States works. Oluo uses the example of the many unarmed Black people killed by the police, while the perpetrators consistently avoid criminal trials.
In her book Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, Ijeoma Oluo describes a phrase that she and her fellow social justice advocates use whenever injustice occurs in society: “works according to design,” meaning that our unequal society didn’t come about by accident – it was designed to keep historically marginalized people on the margins.
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