African American Mental Health Essay

Abstract
Studies have analyzed how African Americans deal with an enormous amount of disease, injury, death, and disability compared to other ethnic group, and whites, Utilization of health services by African Americans is less frequent than other ethnic groups in the country. This non utilization of services contributes to health disparities amongst African Americans in the United States. Current and past studies have shown that because of discrimination, medical mistrust, racial/ethnic background, and poor communication African Americans tend to not seek medical care unless they are in dire need or forced to seek professional care. African Americans would rather self –medicate than to trust a doctor who might show some type of discriminatory

Unfortunately, when released from the detention centers these same individuals are untreated and rarely seek mental health treatments when released into the community, they also tend to display diminished cognitive reasoning and readjustment difficulties amongst their family, peers, and the community (Samuel, 2015). Since, most young black males are often categorized to be aggressive and disorderly they are often misdiagnosed, and likely to receive evasive services, placements and diagnoses of having and mental health issue. Because of this factor mistrust has been recognized as a major obstacle to the utilization of specialty mental health services among racial and ethnic minority populations. Cultural mistrust is explained by African Americans, as the constant mistreatment related to being Black or part of an ethnic group, that Whites cannot be trusted. Mental health doctors have a great challenge when it comes to reassuring young Black males to seek professional help for their suppressed mental health issues. There are three barriers that mental health doctors face: getting the Black male into counseling or mental health treatment, engaging them in the therapeutic process, and keeping them engaged long enough to achieve therapeutic goals. Trust of the mental health professional who will more than likely be white will definitely be the most vital factor to accomplishing each of these objectives (McCoy, Munson, Snowden & McMillen,