Healing Communities Through Mental Health

This is the second part of an ongoing series of articles meant to outline community-based alternatives to aggressive policing that can address violence, social problems and economic inequity faced by heavily policed Black and Brown communities.

In recent years there has been a shift in the cultural conversation around mental health and resources like therapy. As rates of depression, addiction and death by suicide go up, particularly among young people, there has been a push for greater acceptance and awareness for seeking help. Therapy is being normalized and is now more available than ever through several online services, in schools and doctor’s offices. However many residents in lower-income, Black communities that are plagued by violence and oppression have been left out of the conversation.

Trauma from violence, mental health issues and addiction are root causes for crime and violence in America. In turn that violence and economic struggles resulting from it inflict generational trauma and even post-traumatic stress on the residents living with it. It is a vicious that continues to plague Black communities throughout the country.

Prevalence of Mental Health Issues in Black Communities

The high prevalence of mental illness and mental health issues in Black communities is well documented. Recent studies from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency show that sixteen percent of Black Americans reports some form of mental illness. They also find higher rates of substance abuse disorders and depression than white Americans.

High rates of mental illness in Black communities can be traced to several causes. It has been shown that people living under the poverty line or in prison are more than twice and likely to suffer from mental illness. Both issues disproportionately affect Black Americans. But violence in particular has a traumatic effect on Black youth. A University of Chicago paper explains trauma of witnessing or experience violence at a young age leads Black youth to do worse in school, engage in riskier behavior as they get older and even make them more likely to join gangs. When children experience these high-stress situations regularly, it can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. Without proper treatment or coping mechanisms, it can lead to substance abuse or violent behavior as they get older.

Barriers to Treatment and Lack of Resources

Despite the high rates and severity of mental health issues in the Black community, many are denied basic mental health resources. Within the medical system itself Black patients face barriers to receiving treatment. A study from the American Psychiatric Association also shows that Black Americans reporting the same symptoms of white Americans are less likely to receive diagnoses of ADHD, Bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. They also receive medication or therapy at lower rates than the general population.

Many communities also lack access to basic mental health care. Most affordable private health insurance still does not pay for mental health treatment, and programs like Medicare and Medicaid will only cover treatments at public facilities. Meanwhile, those public facilities are disappearing. In 2012, as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel entered his first year in office, his administration closed six of the twelve public mental health clinics in the city. Many of the closed facilities were in majority Black or Hispanic neighborhoods.

The deprivation of mental health treatment leads to higher rates of violence and crime in these minority neighborhoods. Reporting by WBEZ found that areas with fewer mental health facilities received more 911 calls. It shows that where treatment is not available early, mental health issues progress into more violent situations.

Policing of Mental Illness

That is how mental illness leads not only to more crime and violence, but encounters with the police. In many neighborhoods where there are not adequate mental health resources, police become the first response to mental health crises. Particularly as people with mental illnesses go untreated or undiagnosed, their only resource in times of crisis is to call 911. This comes with tragic consequences. Studies from the Treatment Advocacy Center reveal that one in ten police calls involve someone with a mental illness, and one in four victims of fatal police shootings have a mental illness. This often includes suicide by police. Even when the police encounter does not end in violence, a person with mental illness is more likely to end up incarcerated, even for misdemeanor offenses.

Police simply are not trained nor equipped to deal with mental health crises. The police response to an emergency often escalates the situation. By threatening force, yelling and giving contradictory commands, police are more likely to illicit violent reactions from people with mental health issues. In many cases simply not complying with police orders, which somebody suffering from mental illness may not be able to do, is seen as a threat and met with physical force. This was the case when police shot and killed Lacquan McDonald as he walked away in 2014, or Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones in 2015 or James Anderson that same year. In each case the victims had a diagnosed mental health illness and were unarmed, but simply did not comply with police orders.

The violent police response and criminalization of people with mental illness is so common that many police departments have sought to train their officers in responding to mental health crises. After a spike of violence in Chicago in 2016, the city’s Public Health Department invested one million dollars in extra training and mental health resources for the Chicago Police Department. These training programs have become popular across the country. However, studies have shown they are not effective in decreasing shootings or use of force against people with mental illness.

Investing in Mental Health

Rather than outsourcing mental health resources to police the more effective approach seems to be investing in actual mental health facilities and education. Where police only responding in emergencies and providing few alternatives to incarceration, mental health centers can provide treatment and diagnoses, before the crisis point. In fact, despite long held cultural stigma against mental illness in Black communities, many residents and activists within those communities are demanding such resources.

After the controversial string of closures of mental health facilities in their neighborhoods, many Chicagoans fought to build new ones. Local groups like the Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers pushed for legislation that allowed communities to finance their own mental health facilities through increased property tax. The need and desire for mental health facilities in many Chicago neighborhoods is so dire that many residents in lower-income areas favor paying the extra taxes. In 2016 eighty-seven percent of West Side residents voted in favor of levying the tax, which funded the opening of the Encompassing Center to provide mental health services to the surrounding neighborhoods.

Clearly these communities recognize importance of mental health services, and their role in reducing violence. This summer has brought the highest rates of gun violence in decades to the city along with protests against police violence in Black neighborhoods. In response many activists are demanding a new approach that focuses on mental health care rather than policing and incarceration.

However, that approach would be a drastic shift in priority for the city, which local leaders seem reluctant to take up. While Mayor Lori Lightfoot ran on the promise of investing in Black and Brown communities, much of that investment pales in comparison to the budget for policing those communities. Lightfoot’s plan lumps together all root causes of violence from real estate development to mental health, and aims to push $750 million into those sectors over the next three years. Meanwhile, in her first year as mayor the city has spent close to $2 billion on hiring new police officers, including money coming out of the public schools budget.

All of that money and thousands of new officers have not been effective in preventing one of the deadliest summers in Chicago’s history. The city seems to insist on the same violent, police centered approach year after year without any signs of success. Meanwhile evidence continues to support the idea that policies that address mental illness and invest in mental health resources effectively curb gun violence, along with serious issues like depression and suicide. Communities that are struggling with violence and the traumatic impact thereof know this already through generations of tragic experience. Yet it should not be on them to constantly demand and fund the effective resources that the city, state and federal governments refuse to provide. As so many in the city decry the gun violence and tragic daily casualties, it is worth asking what can be done to help those communities heal, rather than locking them up.