PT. 4-COVID-19 “The Effect of Mental Health Among Black & Brown”

What is Mental Health?

Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood.

Every day we’re greeted with the latest coronavirus toll. We hear of the rise in confirmed cases. We get updates on the roiling financial markets and other mortal threats to the economy. We learn how many people have died.

Each alert feels grimmer than the one before. So, lately we’ve started to hear of a different toll. It’s the toll COVID-19 is taking on our sense of stability, our emotional well-being, our mental health.

Mental health experts are addressing these widespread anxieties in online chats. At his daily briefings, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is giving people the number for a hotline manned by mental health professionals who’ve volunteered to talk “about what you’re feeling and what stress you’re feeling.”

These are all good and necessary steps for difficult and uncertain times. But they may not be reaching African Americans who were already disproportionately weighed down by the heavy burdens of stress. According to a study by the National Institutes of Health, “African American men continue to underutilize mental health treatment and have the highest all-cause mortality rates of any racial/ethnic group in the United States.”