Counselling African women in Britain: issues, challenges and prospects

Counseling African Women UK

The people of the world are hurting. Worse yet, the economic downturn and the momentum toward cutting government costs at all levels with little regard to what that means suggests that those who have been treated poorly and unfairly in the past will be first in line to shoulder more suffering. And that bodes poorly for the African and black women of the UK who have only recently begun to be recognized as the true victims of serious systematic injustices that are resulting in or making worse a broad range of mental health concerns (Center for Mental Health, 2011).

This reality comes on top of the fact that it has not been until very recently that women and women of color of the UK have even begun being identified as in serious need of help. Only as recently as 2005 (Mayor of London, Blueprint for Action), 2006 (SCMH) and 2007 (Moore), several major economic and racial assessments really document the problems of the nation's mental health system, and even then in so doing these reports focused almost exclusively on economic costs not racial or gender issues. Not until The Equality Act in 2010, in fact, did gender get sufficient attention to ensure some level of fairness in the provision of services, and still the majority goes to White men before people of color or women (Wallcraft, 2011).

The depth of this neglect and its potential impact for minority and African Caribbean women in Britain (one of several classifications of blacks) can be seen an online factsheet for UK women in distress. This Q&A overview details the level of severity of problems for these women, and then offers ways that counseling and support can be better provided. While it is but one resource now becoming more recognized, it is important for building bridges to women of color who were often the victims of prejudices about their biology and gender in getting care or understanding their conditions. As such, most were left to their own networks for assistance or just got worse, often causing them to need more and more expensive help.

The online posting for Women and Mental Health begins by highlighting a number of conditions that those seeking to offer counseling need to be aware of because they indicate intervention approaches. Among the important findings listed at the beginning of Wallcraft's piece are that,

Rates of anxiety and depression are one and a half to two times higher for women;

Over half of those attending emergency departments for self-hard were women;

Women involved with law enforcement and custody show severe mental health problems almost 78% of the time;

Women who do seek help in the resources that are available have higher rates of depression and other conditions that may be signs of concern; and,

Over ninety percent of persons with eating disorders (conditions associated with self- and cultural image factors) are women, many of whom may well be the very women who are trying to conform to social expectations of success and improvement.

The importance of this trend has been recognized elsewhere too. The World Health Organization has verified that globally not only are the biological factors that cause these kinds of concerns for women exaggerated, but that as a result the conditions are not addresses early enough for women or girls (Astbury, 2001). This is a critical issue that counselors need to be aware as they try to intervene as soon as possible to try to avoid problems that get worse over time.

There are several areas of importance for African-Caribbean UK women worth noting specifically because of what they may suggest if support is not given early (Wright, no date). Among these is the fact that many minority women experience levels of depression and anxiety that could have been started by way of early childhood parenting trauma or exploitations, including sexual exploitation. Counselors need to begin examining this consistency of histories and need to take care in reviewing what it might mean for individuals and their families or other close relationships. A lack of support services that are sensitive to this cultural reality may be part of the problem.

A second issue Wallcraft notes are that those who suffer from prolonged episodes of these types of emotional conditions and who are also blocked from educational, economic and other forms of advancement, may well find themselves in government programs or even prisons where they cannot get much help at all. Though there could be other biological issues too, reports indicate that higher rates of psychoses (including severe conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar extremes) that may go undiagnosed among African Caribbean women in these groups. Counselors need to be educated about this.

And finally, women who are refugees or seeking asylum (many of whom are African Caribbean) are vulnerable to breaks with family and generational support. Studies done across a few generations have already shown the importance of this factor, though they also indicate that some older African women are using other means to fill the gap for the girls in the families, often using newer versions of storytelling, child shifting and other traditional methods to substitute for what might otherwise be lost. There could well be ways that counselors could use new technologies to help in this way for African and Black Caribbean women who are otherwise trying to fit in to the new cultural expectations.

For those most in need at this time of economic uncertainty it will be extremely important for counselors to look to these kinds of paths to ensure that they African and other minority women they serve get the care they need early on. This may also make it easier for the growing community of women in the UK who are giving serious attention to these problems to fight for their fair share of public and charitable funding until governments get reestablished with their financial health (SCMH, 2006). Going backwards and ignoring the progress made so far for African women in the UK seems to be a poor public and financial solution and one whose impact will be felt even more severely in the future.