Minority Mental Health: Stigma, Trust and Socioeconomic Challenges Persist for Many

Many U.S. minorities grapple with a disproportionately higher share of untreated mental health issues and serious chronic conditions, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and coronary artery disease. August is Minority Mental Health Awareness month, a designation intended to bridge mental health disparities between races, ethnicities and nationalities.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC), many populations experience physical and mental health disparities, “including people from some racial and ethnic minority groups, people with disabilities, women, people who are LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or other), people with limited English proficiency, and other groups.”

The CDC's Office of Minority Health promotes public health research, evidence-based programs, policies, and strategies to improve the health and well-being of people in racial and ethnic minority groups.

One challenge that healthcare professionals and public health agencies are grappling with is that many minorities have trust issues with the U.S. healthcare system, explains Raphi Wald, Psy.D., a board-certified neuropsychologist with Marcus Neuroscience Institute at Boca Raton Regional Hospital, part of Baptist Health.

Raphael Wald, Psy.D., a neuropsychologist with Marcus Neuroscience Institute at Boca Raton Regional Hospital.

 

“There are a lot of different challenges that they face, but one of the main ones is that they have difficulty trusting the mental healthcare system,” said Dr. Wald. “Many of them have had negative experiences in other areas of healthcare, or they have had negative experiences through family members, so it can be difficult for them to trust. And, obviously, trust is crucial in any kind of a mental health alliance. Without that, it can be very, very difficult to make progress.”

Cultural stigma plays “a significant role in delaying treatment-seeking behavior for individuals struggling with mental health issues,” states as recent report published by the National Institutes of Health. “The fear of being labeled, ostracized, or misunderstood due to their condition often deters individuals from seeking help promptly.”

The stigma is more pronounced in many minority communities. According to the American Psychiatric Association: “Racial/ethnic, gender, and sexual minorities often suffer from poor mental health outcomes due to multiple factors including inaccessibility of high-quality mental health care services, cultural stigma surrounding mental health care, discrimination, and overall lack of awareness about mental health.”

“There are a lot of cultures that view mental health problems differently from the way that some others might see them,” explains Dr. Wald. “So, for example, we are becoming better as a society at looking to mental health challenges and seeing them as medical challenges.

“But there are cultures where they can be seen more as a sign of weakness, which can be a barrier to people to come out and say: ‘I am struggling with this. I need some help.’ Because of sort of the stigma, and the embarrassment that comes along with it, it can be just yet another barrier for people from different cultures.”

While most fields of psychology focus on the individual, the still-evolving practice of “community psychology” also studies the effect of a community’s social, racial/ethnic and economic barriers on the individual.