Lay My Burden Down: Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis Among African-Americans

My mother died by suicide when I was 9 years old. What I find most amazing till this day is how my family (we are African-American) refused to talk about her mental illness and the circumstances that lead to her death. For years, I would rather lie about her death and her illness, than admit that she was mentally ill. This book takes the blinders off an issue that we don't like to talk about in the black community. How many times have we heard comedians joke about mental health issues being a "white man's disease". But the truth is that mental illness affects people of all classes, ethnic backgrounds and religion. It can especially hit the poor very hard due to insufficient access to health care. With necessary information, statistics and a very objective approach, the authors of this great book show how mental illness is more of a problem than we would like to think, and yet "age old stigmas" (especially the one that associates mental illness with being crazy) make it hard for us to seek the treatment that we need. Of course, there are other issues that are addressed, such as the insensitivity of the health care community towards the health care needs of African-Americans. This book is a must read for anyone sinmcerly concerned about the overall health of the African-American community and our society as a whole

I work with people with mental illness and substance abuse. I have shared this book with many of my African American clients and everytime I do I get such positive reinforcement that the authors of this book have given them their dignity back. It has answered ages old questions about the the black experience that everyone should know. This book should be a must read for all our children.

Drs. Poussaint and Alexander poises thought provoking questions on the rise of African American suicides especially among young males. The authors states, if African Americans endured over three centuries of slavery and Jim Cow laws without succumbing to hopelessness and self negation, why is their a surge in suicides today? Is crime and poverty, (the catalysts of hopelessness) contributing to the demise of young African American males? Is the participation of young African Americans in drug and alcohol abuse, unsafe sex, a form suicide, related to unfulled dreams and a feeling of hoplessness? The authors set out to answer these questions in the context of the pervasiveness of racism, which greatly contributes to a "mental health crisis" which is tightening its grip among young African Americans.