Confronting the Stigma and Racial Disparities of Mental Illness

Almost half of all Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And, in any given year, one in five adults in the United States experiences a mental illness. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated mental distress for many Americans. Some are being diagnosed for the first time with depression and other disorders that come with being isolated. GBH News examined the role that the seemingly never-ending racial trauma has played in the uptick of suicidal deaths among young African Americans. And our colleagues at PBS NewsHour have reported that the “grief pandemic” will torment Americans for years, with more than 5 million Americans in mourning from family and friends lost to COVID-19.

The diagnosis of mental illness carries stigma that a heart condition or other physical ailments don’t. All too often, mental health ranks below physical health. This surfaced in the headlines earlier this month when tennis star Naomi Osaka left play at the French Open citing mental health reasons. For people in communities of color, gaining access to care to mental health care is not always an option because of barriers involving race, language, class and religion.

For all of these reasons and more, focusing on mental health is more essential than ever. This month, GBH plays an important role in addressing this issue with a new multiplatform initiative, Mysteries of Mental Illness, examining the history of mental illness in science and society. The production includes a four-hour national television broadcast (June 22 and 23), a short-form digital video series, virtual events, website resources and a social media campaign (#MentalHealthPBS).

We learn from our production that, for much of history, people living with schizophrenia, like aspiring astrophysicist turned mental health activist Cecilia McGough, would have been seen as a witch or a devil. Yet today, despite struggling with persistent hallucinations and delusions, Cecilia helps hundreds around the world find support and community through her organization, Students with Psychosis. Other current-day profiles in the series include Virginia Fuchs, an Olympics-bound boxer living with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and Lorina Gutierrez, who was committed to a psychiatric hospital until her psychosis was revealed to be a result of an ovarian tumor.

The second half of the 20th century brought a struggle to develop mental illness standards rooted in empirical science rather than dogma, including the evolution of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), which remains the so-called “Bible of Psychiatry” even today, despite what many acknowledge are its deep and fundamental flaws. Profiles in our series include Ryan Mains, a former firefighter and Iraq veteran struggling with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); Mia Yamamoto, who spent time in a Japanese internment camp, long resisted being labeled mental ill before she became California’s first openly transgender lawyer; and Michael Walrond, a Harlem-based pastor, who lives with his own depressive disorder.

Mass confinement in ‘asylums’ (some holding up to 19,000 people) and extreme treatments – from lobotomy to coma therapy – were standard treatment for mental illness in the U.S. until a few decades ago. Today, the nation’s largest de-facto mental health facility is Cook County Jail in Chicago, where more than one-third of inmates have a mental health diagnosis. The series profiles a detainee who receives more mental health services within jail than outside of it.

Bringing these critical and authentic stories to audiences on multiple platforms helps confront the stigma and gives voice to people across a spectrum of experiences. The initiative kicks off with a short-form digital video series Decolonizing Mental Health, produced by GBH WORLD and Rada Studio. It shines a light on the racism that underscores the mental healthcare industry and exposes disparities in mental health care, featuring populations whose mental health issues often go underreported, untreated or ignored. By focusing its gaze on the transformative work of therapists and individuals of color, the digital series calls for a redressal of the way psychiatric illness and health are defined.  

This initiative is a powerful example of the service that public media provides for all communities about essential issues related to health and wellness. One of the first steps toward confronting stigma in mental health is changing how we talk about it and giving people space to tell their stories.

Watch Mysteries of Mental Illness on television (June 22 and 23 on GBH 2, 9pm) and online and stream on the PBS Video App. Stream Decolonizing Mental Health.

Stream: Decolonizing Mental Health: A Conversation: A panel of mental health industry experts and advocates including Dr. Sidney Hankerson, Dr. Dan Foster, Paul Hoang, LCSW and Shawna Murray-Browne, LCSW-C discuss the unique mental health care challenges faced by underrepresented communities and those that have been historically marginalized. The conversation is moderated by Tina Martin, host of GBH WORLD’s Local, USA.