Approaching this topic has had me typing paragraphs and then hitting backspace nonstop. Honestly, how do I tackle this? Which angle to I take it from? I could give you numbers, stats, medical terms. But nah, I don't think it's personal enough. Disclaimer nothing here is meant to be an over generalization or meant to paint any groups of people with a single stroke. So I will start with a personal story. The summer of 2014, my mom, sister and I went back home to Cote d'Ivoire to her family. My mom hadn't seen her parents in over 16 years and the trip was all around emotional. We were, of course, staying with my grandparents and most of the family lived together.
The very morning after we had arrived I was awakened to screams in the living room. I ran out in a state a panic and what I saw in that living room was something that I will likely carry with me for the rest of my life. My cousin Mimi (33 years old) had stabbed himself in the stomach and as his intestines were falling out from the hole in his stomach, he was struggling and fighting against my uncles who were trying to get him stabilized and into a cab and taken to the hospital. The look in his eyes was unlike anything I had ever seen before and something I still today and not able to describe and so I won't try. He was adamant that he would die on that living room floor that morning. Unfazed by the pain, the blood, the sight of his own intestines pouring into his lap, his mother's tears, my grandmother tears and anyone's fear. He was done.
Shortly after they managed to restrain him and get him to the hospital and exchange between my mom, aunt (Mimi's mother) and grandmother left me annoyed and truly questioning why Africans approach mental illness in the way that they do. Everyone in the house was emotional and traumatized but the first words out of my grandmother's mouth in all of her tears and despair was “He’s cursed, someone did voodoo on him and he’s crazy.” My mother and aunt wasted no time in telling her to remove such evil thoughts and words from his destiny.
In the days after, I learned so much more about Mimi and his situation. A few years before, Cote d'Ivoire had a Civil War in which my cousin Mimi fought in and for the most part didn't return from. Now most of you reading might recognize that he was suffering from PTSD. But as news traveled and people came by to check on him everyone wanted to ask, “what was wrong with him?” some suggested he was crazy and someone had performed voodoo on him and my mom had to explain to them that he was suffering from PTSD and it wasn't supernatural, it was mental and emotional as well as physical.
Sometimes he would sit in his chair and stare into the air for hours sullen, never speaking. ever. The only time I saw his mood change or he was able to interact was when I gave him my MP3 and he listened to my songs for a few hours. Slowly but surely he began to speak to my mom a little bit who seemed to understand his plight a lot better than his mother. He explained how he tried to end his life because he was tired, and he knew his mother was tired as well. His condition was so debilitating she was caring for him again as if he was a newborn child. Nothing they were trying was working. The depression had consumed him and he even had bouts of irritability. He would yell at people randomly and attempt to fight family members on a whim. Most of the family had resolved to just leave him be and come to the terms with the fact that he was “cursed” and that if they prayed enough Allah would eventually intervene.
We were there no longer than two weeks, but in two weeks his mood changed quite a bit. I can't say for sure why that was. Whether it was the painkillers, his brush with death, constant conversations with my mother or that MP3 player, but I left the Ivory Coast with a heavy heart knowing that I couldn't take his pain with me. I left him the MP3 player and anything else that made him happy to have. A few years later, he is doing much better and for that I am thankful. But for a long time I was so angry with my family for not being of more use and help to him. For allowing trivial superstitions to block his access to the proper care he needed. And vowed to myself that one day I had to do something about it.
Did you know that children with parents that are mentally ill are more likely to suffer from mental illness?
Did you know that there is in fact a link between socioeconomic class and mental illness as well as access to treatment?
Did you know that mental illness often times goes undiagnosed and untreated?
My mom suffered from depression. So did I. I was only in 5th grade.
In our community, adults often never understood what mental illness was nonetheless how to deal with it or identify the signs. And so, in turn, their children’s cries for help were ignored or stifled. It is an ugly cycle that destroys communities and our ability to thrive from generation to generation. Suicide rates for the millennial generation are unspeakable.
I’m rambling but really my point is this: People of the African diaspora have always and will always have history and stories rooted in glory as well as tribulations. We are a strong people, a mighty people but we are not invincible. It is time we take care of ourselves and each other. Heart, mind and soul. We can no longer neglect our physical, emotional and mental health because of superstition, taboo, awkwardness or lack of knowledge. We have to have these conversations free of cultural, religious and familial customs or beliefs. Many of our ways of handling things in life are outdated. That, of course, is not to say that prayer is. But prayer works well in conjunction with other methods as well. This post doesn't even scratch the surface of this conversation but it was important that I bleed my heart out onto my keys tonight.
