On Sept. 25, 2023, the Biden-Harris administration announced that it will be investing some $200 million in the youth mental health crisis. Since youth mental health was declared a national emergency in 2021, multiple experts, including the U.S. Surgeon General, have cited social media and the COVID-19 pandemic, among other things, as major contributing factors.
But what has not been talked about to the same extent, is how anti-Black racism is fueling the youth mental health crisis. Racism has a crucial impact on the mental health of Black youth, and the current mental health system is not equipped to address it.
The truth is that the effects of racism on the mental health of Black Americans start even before birth. The stress of racism experienced by Black mothers has been linked to low birthweight babies, which puts those children at greater risk for developing depression and other child mental health issues. Prenatal anti-Black racism can also have other persistent effects. Maternal reports of racism affect the socio-emotional development of Black children in their first year of life, with links to negative emotionality.
Indeed, Black children and adolescents are suffering at unprecedented rates, and have been for over 20 years. Black youth are dying by suicide at rates increasing faster than any other racial or ethnic group: Black children as young as five years old are 1.8 times as likely to commit suicide compared to their white peers. The suicide rates of other ethnic groups, except for Latinx and American Indian/Alaskan Native youth, have remained virtually the same or declined, even from 2019 to 2020 in the height of the pandemic.
Read more at Time.com.
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