The International Handbook of Black Community Mental Health

 

The first international handbook on Black community mental health is due to publish on 8th June 2020. This handbook focuses on key issues including stereotypes in Mental health, misdiagnoses, and inequalities/discrimination around access, services and provisions.

 

Making use of a cultural competence framework throughout, the book covers many of the classic mental health/developmental areas such as schizophrenia, mental health disorders, ASD and ADHD, but it also looks at more controversial areas in mental health, like inequalities, racism and discrimination both in practice and in graduate school training and the supervisory experiences of black students in universities. Unique among traditional academic texts addressing mental health, the book presents rich personal accounts from Black therapists and students. Many Black students who are training to become therapists or academics in mental health report negative experiences with white university staff in terms of a lack of support, encouragement, resulting in poor graduation outcomes.

 

While institutional racism is a major issue both in society and universities, the editors of this Handbook take personal-level racism, microaggression and everyday racism as better models for understanding and analysing both these students; racialised interaction/communication experiences with white staff at university, as well as the racialised communications and inequalities in misdiagnoses, access to services and provisions in healthcare settings with white managers.

 

In his Foreword, ‘Father of Black Psychology’ Prof Joseph L. White describes the book as “outstanding”, “very timely” and says it “will go a long way towards raising awareness challenging systems and structures and creating more favourable positive outcomes for people of colour who access mental health services.” The Prologue by author, public speaker and television consultant Prof Alvin Poussaint says, “I applaud the Editors’ work. This insightful book will prove valuable for individuals who seek a better understanding of the challenges people of colour face in mental health.”

Find out more here: https://bit.ly/2VJfP0Z

The International Handbook of Black Community Mental Health

Edited by Richard Majors, Karen Carberry and Theodore Ransaw

9781839099656 | 720 pages | Jun 20 | Hardback | £140.00 €165.00