BREAKING GENERATIONAL CURSES. Zaire Knight

As a Black Trans-man who grew up with a mother who had bipolar I knew the value of mental health awareness intimately I myself had felt often the grip of loneliness and battled depression and anxiety The kind that would make me feel as though I was sinking in a tar pit trap and could feel the loss of every single bubble of air leaving my lungs and the pit around me as I sunk deeper Opening up about these issues can be really hard when in many Black communities in particular we rely more heavily on praying about these issues over addressing them from a more sustainable medical standpoint

Growing up in poverty deprived me of basic needs and has left me constantly grappling with trying to survive. Having depression and anxiety definitely didn’t help, and I was surrounded my entire life by people who needed help as much, if not more than I did, except many of them have no knowledge of mental illness or the benefits of therapy, or even a self-care routine. The first thing on your mind when you have nowhere to live, or nothing to eat, is not ‘Where can I find a therapist?’, for many people in disparaged communities.

I myself went through several therapists throughout my childhood since I was 11 years old as a result of my mother having mental breakdowns during her pregnancy with my younger sister and ultimately being hospitalized for bipolar. It was terrifying as a child to see my mother taken out of our bedroom by cops while we were living with my greatgrandmother We had been staying with my grandmother because of my mother’s inability to stay in our home because of vivid violent hallucinations in which she was being tormented by the Devil Up to that point my mother had not received much medical care and had been heavily encouraged on multiple occasions by our family to simply pray about it, or even told snide remarks about how it was her inconsistency with fellowship in the church that allowed the Devil to prey on her, even though we grew up in the church It even seemed the more she read her bible, the more the hallucinations had to feed on.

Later in life I myself had to be hospitalized for trying to commit suicide on more than one occasion as a result of my own depressive episodes.

According to the Southern Medical Journal (SMJ) there is a rising amount of mental health issues in the United States and a lack of accessible services for healthcare in general which contributes to and feeds the rise of Mental health issues in our communities.The groups clearly disproportionately affected by this are minorities and people living in poverty where healthcare is heavily needed and not readily provided

It is also worth mentioning that as a result of slavery and the malpractice of medical institutions in handling the healthcare of Black people, there is a great deal of distrust between Black people in particular and health facilities. One major shadow looming over all of us is the lasting effects of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which hundreds of Black men were misled to believe they had “bad blood” and were experimented on without their consent for 40 years starting in 1932. The results were blindness, paralysis, organ damage, severe mental illness, and death

As a poor Queer Black Trans person I feel deeply the pain of every time our people have been let down by the medical community, and the pain of every time I hear someone who looks like me disregard mental health issues because of our very tragic and unique relationship with the American Healthcare System. The struggle of finding a therapist who looks like you, or understands your feelings, is affordable, or even accepts your insurance is a disservice to our communities who have long been owed so much more While prayer may not have the ability to stop us from suffering, it is still something I do as I hope that one day we acknowledge the need of a balance between our spirituality and our pursuit for proper medical care, as well as to be treated as human beings in a society that still hasn’t felt the grip of guilt for its previous transgressions

https://sma org/southern-medicaljournal/article/association-betweenfinancial-barriers-to-healthcare-accessand-mental-health-outcomes-intennessee/

https://www plannedparenthood org/blog/ what-is-the-tuskegeestudy#:~:text=The%20Tuskegee%20Stud y%20is%20a,and%20abuse%20in%20U S %20history