COVD-19 has brought a lot of talk about mental health. You have free mental health apps, mental health commercials and even offerings for free mental health sessions. But when you think of all that is available, none of it gives much relief from the pain of knowing that a black man was senselessly gunned down, decried his good name having been described initially as having broken into someone’s home and denied justice that one vestige of human dignity the comes with an immediate arrest. Mental health apps are blunt instruments at best with this sort of pain.
While there were always those who made it a practice of caring for the insane, by some historical accounts American psychiatry with its diagnostic categories, did not formally come to be until after WWII. Post-WWII there was a need to designate supports for those who’d been left destitute from the war. One way the federal government determined who to support was by determining who was employable. Defining need by functional ability justified aiding those who for physical or emotional deficits could not work.
The discipline of psychiatry became a catchall for those who did not have physical limitations or intellectual deficits but still were unable to work. Over the years as the understanding of the biology of the brain grew so did the understanding of true disorders and the mistaken ones. Despite the gains in psychiatry – it has not been a place where dysfunctions in society have been examined and it has little to offer in understanding why certain social behaviors exist and persist, particularly as it relates to matters of race and violence.
Why does the death of one more Black man evoke such profound emotional reactions? What drives someone to complete such an act? What do we do to heal if it is not through mental health?
The reason this murder haunts our souls so deeply is because it was not only an assault on Ahmaud, one solo black man, BUT an assault on what Ahmaud represents in the mind of white men. The brutal attack on Ahmaud emboldens this idea that Black people are no more than fear-filled specimens who only need be scared to death to stay in line. Ahmaud’s death is as much about Ahmaud as it is about those of us Black people, he left living in his wake.
The expectation is that this heinous act will unearth a slumbering fear –halting any more acts of living freely or boldly and further halt any thought of personal or social power. Ahmaud’s death was not just the end of a life of one man but an attempt at certification on the notion that Blacks have been and will continue to be powerless to the fear dehumanization by white men brings. Thus paralyzing any attempts to demand rights, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.
It’s a mind game and one where the victim, like in brainwashing, is left to deprogram on their own and in the spaces where mental health does not reach. Being toyed with in this way hits to the core of one’s personhood and worth. It sends vibrations rippling from one beating heart to the next – because in death or life, it says you are powerless and will always be regarded as such.
But instead of remaining paralyzed and powerless, you can decide to stand separate from the mind game and manipulation. Facing this fear requires being prepared to understand it, find the powerlessness that lives off of it, pluck it out, and declare it will no longer hold you hostage. It means taking a stand to act in power over fear. And using that power to accomplish things that no gun could!
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