African American Youth with Mental Illness

Part 1: Background

Observation

The African American Youth experience unique structural and contextual hurdles as they transition from childhood into early adulthood. While their experiences vary, similar cultural phenomena are prevalent and make this population more prone to mental health challenges than white peers. According to Snowden (2020), one in every five African American youth (9 million) has a severe mental illness, and less than half of them receive treatment for the preexisting condition. Further, any psychiatric care attention to the untreated population is administered in emergency centers instead of specialized facilities in mental healthcare compared to peers from other races. Notably, emergency room physicians are only equipped to handle such cases when there is an emergency and are only a short-term solution to deescalate the mental health crisis. However, the access to mental healthcare in communities where mental health challenges are prevalent is limited or looked upon as a point of shame to engage by individuals who might be living with mental illness and society, resulting in stigma.

These challenges are made perennial in the African American community for the youth due to the lack of attention to these challenges in the earlier generations. The historical injustices, such as enslavement; economic, social, and political marginalization; and denial of access to essential services such as healthcare, have contributed to the development and persistence of the perennial problem of mental health problems. These past challenges are still preexistent in modern structural, individual, and institutional racism that has purveyed a mistrust in the healthcare system in these economically marginalized communities. Such communities are characterized by a high prevalence of drug abuse among African American youth, low academic achievement and high dropout rates, and a high prevalence of violence (Mental Health America, 2022). Such environmental conditions contribute to high depression prevalence from childhood and untreated into adulthood. Religious outreach as a means of coping with depression was a belief system that seeking medical intervention results in stigmatization and victimization of the affected individuals.

Identification of the Problem

The social problem that needs addressing is the lack of access to mental healthcare knowledge and stigmatization of individuals seeking mental illness treatment. However, the problem can further be classified into the lack of awareness about the need and efficacy of mental health treatment, poverty that limits access to mental healthcare, lack of social support for treatment, and negative attitudes towards mental health treatment among peers and members of the community. In Research conducted by Mental Health America (2022), 13.4% of the U.S. population accounting for 46 million of the national population, are black and more than 25% of African American youth experience different types of violence and dangers, placing this population at higher risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (APA, 2015). The social-economic status disproportionately disadvantages black youth by being overrepresented by 22% of the national population living in poverty, incarceration, presenting in foster homes, and being victims of violent crime. As discussed by the Office of the Surgeon General (US) (2001), the challenge of access to mental healthcare found that only 2% of licensed psychiatrists in the U.S. are African American. These challenge with access to mental healthcare is prevalent. Despite the stigmatization of mental health patients, the lack of familiarity with the healthcare providers furthers the mistrust of the mental healthcare providers and limits community engagement.

Focus Group and Community

Approaching...…drug abuse among the youth and seek help from mental healthcare facilities.

Part 2: Engagement Plan

Engagement

The suitable strategic approach is the establishment of long-term strategies and short-term strategies of community engagement to address the perennial and immediate mental health needs in these communities. Long-term strategies focus on social, economic, and political epistemic challenges in the community. The initial step will be to create awareness of the already existing mental health services and burgeoning with the county council and the city administration to increase funding for these projects. Creating awareness will involve engagement of community programs to ensure community participation in developing the plan and educational material on social media promoting in this region to promote inclusiveness, collaboration, and kinship as sources of social support.

Supervision Plan

As established, most of the families in the African American communities are Christian, and these communities values and moral compass are centered on faith. As such, through the supervision of the program, I will integrate these virtues, such as love, accountability for others, and service to others, into the implementation of the program. The specialists invited to the program will offer guidance on the empirical and the ethical parameters for practice. As the supervisor selected for this role, I will have to show and cultivate time management skills, good communication skills, resilience, conflict resolution ability, and a positive attitude.

Part 3: Assessment Plan

Assess

Evaluation of the program is critical to determine the programs efficacy at different levels of execution. The evaluation metric will be generated according to the social-ecological model of health. The data will be collected from mental health facilities, face-to-face interactions with community members, and policy administrator reviews. Evaluation will be conducted periodically to address the challenges emerging from the…