10/24/2024
Stigma about mental health is big in immigrant communities: you’re not alone
Felista Anugom is a Doctoral prepared Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner at Prudent Psychiatry and can be reached at hello@prudentpsychiatry.com
I came to the United States when I was a teenager. My parents, both from Nigeria, were driven to flee their home country, and everything they knew, in order to provide a better life for their three children.
For the first years of our lives here, I barely saw both parents together. They took work wherever and whenever they found it. Still, each, in their way, drilled into us the key to success – good education, hard work and fear of God.
Our family lived amidst other immigrants, and we were bound by our common purpose. My focus was to make my parents proud by achieving success. Despite my great aspiration and inspiration, our lives in the U.S. were not an easy one. What I remember most vividly of our lives in our first years in the U.S. is the loneliness—going a whole school day without anyone saying a word to me or my uttering a word; sitting alone in a crowded lunchroom, and school events where the only games I ever played were in my head.
Occasionally in our community, someone’s child, mother, father or relative, exhibited what I now know are signs of mental illness. But even as a child, I recognized the stigma -- the whispers, the hushed tones when that person was discussed, the shame that their immediate family carried.
Our community viewed anyone who suffered from mental health infirmities as wanting, weak and incapable of handling their issues. It was a common belief that people can generally handle their own issues and did not need others’ intervention.
So, I grew up knowing that the topic of mental health was never to be discussed, at least not in public. But I watched people, including those close to me, suffer alone through the years.
My Nigerian community is not alone in our attitudes towards all mental health related issues. Studies show that Hispanics, Blacks, and “other” ethnic/racial groups were between 40 and 50 percent less likely to seek mental health treatment than non-Hispanic whites.
I lived this and know it firsthand. It took me years to get here, but now I think differently and have dedicated most of my life to acquiring skills necessary to help alleviate mental health issues, especially in communities like the one I grew up in.
I went to nursing school because that was a guarantee of a job and a life in the middle class. But I kept going -- got a bachelors in nursing and a master's degree and a nurse practitioner's license. I have worked for more than 10 years as a nurse practitioner in a hospital setting, treating severe mental cases. Now, I am ready to return to where it all started to work with communities that remind me of my parents and my childhood.
According to statistics, more than 40 million people living in the U.S. are foreign born, accounting for 13.7% of the U.S. population. That number can only go up.
Like we did, immigrants suffer immensely in their first years in the U.S. -- cultural and linguistic barriers, separation from family and adjustment to a new, and sometimes unreceptive environment -- are all stressors capable of affecting mental health.
Still, despite the severity of the problems arising from these stressors, a majority of immigrants are not receptive to mental health services. Rather, they rely on social support for their mental health needs, turning first to friends, family, or religious leaders. I observed this practice while I was growing up and in my years as a registered nurse working in immigrant communities.
Though there are existing disparities in access to mental health services, these are further amplified by factors such as distrust of healthcare providers, lack of access to mental health services, reluctance to discuss psychological distress, financial factors, cultural identity, and poor communication between service users and providers, all compounded by difficulties in securing an appointment with a mental health provider, resulting in underdiagnosed mental health conditions.
As a healthcare advocate, delivering culturally sensitive care has always been my professional philosophy. Thus, I decided to build the necessary credentials to help in addressing the need for mental health providers, hopefully, reducing the health disparity stemming from it.
This is what I believe. Overall, improved mental health treatment for minority communities can be achieved through expanding access to mental health care with proper attention paid to each group’s behavioral and mental health needs.
Success can be achieved by providing linguistically and culturally appropriate mental health care through collaboration among community leaders, mental and behavioral health providers, government agencies, educators, and families to facilitate evidence-based prevention and early intervention.
