systemic trauma

➡️ Systemic racism and discrimination are forms of systemic oppression.

➡️Systemic racism is a form of violence that places or keeps people of color in conditions of hunger and poverty through the structural withholding of resources and opportunities, hyper-surveillance, and unjust incarceration inflicted on racialized individuals and communities (Center for Hunger-Free Communities)

👉Experiences with racism are associated with anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric symptoms (Pieterse AL, Todd NR, Neville HA, Carter RT. Perceived racism and mental health among Black American adults: a meta-analytic review. J Counseling Psych. 2012, 59(1):1-9)

👉People’s experiences with oppression and the accompanying trauma have been invalidated for many generations. This invalidation comes from people with the power and privilege enacting oppressive behavior and has also led to people of color internalizing trauma (Self-Stigma: Internalizing Trauma. Wise Wisconsin https://wisewisconsin.org/blog/self-stigma-internalizing-trauma/. Published June 15, 2017)

It is necessary to:
🔹Acknowledge and address systematic oppression and discrimination as trauma to inform the necessary steps toward healing the trauma that millions of people of color face and the circumstances of poverty that exacerbate and reproduce this trauma.

​🔹Facilitate the success of mental health professionals of color as well as accessibility of educational resources to shift negative stigmas around mental health in communities of color.