Black WOMEN AND THE BLUES - why so many Sisters are mad and sad

Ebony, May, 1999 by Kelly Starling

Why so many Sisters are mad and sad

HER depression arrived in a haze of forgetfulness. The young woman would stand in the grocery store aisle unsure what she came to buy. While driving, she would lose track of where she was headed. It took just days for her to lapse into confusion. The honk of cars, the footsteps of pedestrians, the voices of strangers pressed her into panic. Everyday sounds became unbearable. Then came the unexplainable sadness and paralyzing fatigue.

"I stopped going out of the house," remembers Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, author of Willow Weep For Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression. "I stopped bathing. I couldn't get it together to wash dishes. I began ordering in food but then ran out of money and didn't want to go to the bank to get more."

Danquah called in sick and unplugged the phone. She can't remember how long her depression lasted. Torturous hours turned into days and weeks. She staved immobile, most times getting up just long enough to drag a pallet of blankets from room to room. "I couldn't watch TV," she says "I couldn't listen to the radio or, if I did, I ended up feeling pessimistic because of all the love songs. I did nothing except wait mound for it to end."

Just as suddenly as it surfaced, the gloom began to lift. Each day, the writer found she could do a little more --brush her teeth, wash her face, get dressed.

"When I finished with that episode--or I should say when that episode finished with me--a friend called and told me the Berlin Wall had been torn down," recalls the author who always kept up with current events. "I was horrified. It hadn't happened the night before. She had gone to Berlin and come back with a piece of the wall ... I'm someone who reads the paper and listens to the news ... Something major had happened in history and I had literally slept through it."

Like many Sisters, it took years for Danquah to recognize--and then accept--she suffered from clinical depression. Experts say Black women are often reluctant to get help because of a web of myths that silences discussions about mental-health concerns. People are just starting to understand Black women of all economic backgrounds and ages--mothers, daughters, corporate Sisters, working-class Black women struggling to make ends meet--can slump into the awful ache of sadness that depression brings.

Everyone feels bouts of the blues, but for people with depression, the sorrow never seems to end. It's a crippling place where people feel no pleasure from pastimes, find no peace in sleep, may drop or gain pounds in a matter of days. Unlike ordinary spells of sadness, depression endures for weeks. The person can feel weighed down by her troubles like she's trying to wade through a river of grief.

For some Sisters, the blues are caused by biological and genetic factors. But for an increasing number of Black women, depression is triggered by life's traumas. Poverty, dysfunctional relationships, loss of a loved one and job-related blues are a few of the top causes mental health professionals name.

"We see depression increase as social pressures increase," says Dr. Samson Adegbite, a Buffalo psychiatrist. "The cost of living is increasing, welfare rolls are going down. It's the pressure of single womanhood, poverty and joblessness."

As many as one of every four American women will become depressed in their lifetimes--a statistic assumed to be similar for Black women, though no research is available. The illness is treatable, but few Sisters--just 7 percent by some estimates--get the help they need.

The lack of awareness about depression has experts rating it among the No. 1 threats to Black women's well-being. During major depression, Sisters can lose interest in their appearance and hygiene, have no energy to do even simple things like get out of bed and may have frequent thoughts of death.

"Depression can be lethal," says Dr. Kennise Hening, a clinical psychologist and co-author of What the Blues is All About: Black Women Overcoming Stress and Depression. "People who are depressed can become significantly pessimistic so they kill themselves."

The devastating effects of depression is not news. As far back as actress Dorothy Dandridge--and more recently songstress Phyllis Hyman, Chicago columnist Leanita McClain, author Terri Jewell and Pittsburgh executive Dianna Green --Black women lost in depression have committed suicide. Danquah also admits she had thoughts of death.

"It was a vicious cycle of self-hatred that took a toll on my self-esteem," she says. "When you strut to feel your life has no value, you start to think maybe the best way out is to end it all."

Like the intensity of the sadness, the triggers of' depression vary for each person. But experts have found among many Black women there are common factors.

"We are socialized to want to take care of everybody, which leads to a certain degree of neglect of ourselves," says Dr. Cynthia Grace, a clinical psychologist whose New York practice is about 75 percent Black, professional women. "We want to do it all but at the same time we feel terribly unsupported. There is the sense if we don't do it, no one will."