When treating indigenous and people of African descent clients, clinicians tend to overemphasize the relevance of psychotic symptoms and overlook symptoms of major depression compared to treating clients with other racial or ethnic backgrounds. For this reason, they are, in particular, greatly over-diagnosed with schizophrenia when a mood disorder is also present. Schizophrenia is a disorder that (by definition) must be diagnosed by exclusion, meaning that its symptoms can’t be explained by another psychiatric disorder (like a mood disorder). Therefore, the fact that Black people end up with schizophrenia diagnoses without a mood disorder diagnosis despite the clinical presentation of a mood disorder means that these symptoms are being ignored and that in itself is a form of racism, which is the fundamental basis of the collective neurosis that ails many people in America.
Racism is a mental health issue because it causes trauma. And trauma paints a direct line to mental illnesses, which need to be taken seriously. When you are a racist, you are already armed with venomous habits. Because it is a habit, you no longer can see it. Therefore racism is a form of psychosis.
Racism is embedded in our everyday activities. How we cause unnecessary trauma to individuals, family, community, society, and nations – all comes down to one thing, disregard that comes from racism. Racial trauma builds up from cumulative experience across time from genetic heritage, cultural heritage, television programming, billboards, radio, social media messaging, the work environment, the school environment, home, Racial profiling, mass incarceration, hate group heckling, Banks, and credit companies dealing, the stake is high, the odds infinite, and the risk is too much. There is nowhere to breathe. Regardless of individual strength, every single person of African and indigenous descent experiences some form of depression in their lifetime. These stress hormones often lead to physical conditions like high blood pressure and heart disease and mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and overall poor health outcomes.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights activism and ministries impacted lives and history in countless ways, but he was not immune to the circumstances of his race; he had a deep struggle with depression and suicidal tendencies. Martin Luther King knew what it meant to be maladjusted, psychologically, because he was not stable, psychiatrically. He had multiple periods of severe depression that concerned his circle. However, he overcame these challenges.
During a tour to promote his book, Stride Toward Freedom, while doing a book signing at Blumstein’s department store in Harlem, on September 20, 1958, an African American woman by the name of Izola Curry approached and asked him if he was Martin Luther King Jr, she asked with a Southern drawl. When King replied yes, Without warning, the woman leaned over the desk and plunged a seven-inch penknife into King’s chest with such force that it snapped the handle after asking him, “Why do you annoy me?” Bystanders restrained the woman, until she could be arrested. “I’ve been after him for six years. I’m glad I done it!” she shouted.
See the broken piece of knife sticking out of his chest.
Curry had a loaded pistol in her bra and was mentally ill. During her police interrogation, she gave incoherent and conflicting statements and referred to him as “Arthur King” or “Arthur Luther.” Curry blamed King and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for conspiring with communists, placing her under constant surveillance, and preventing her from holding a steady job. According to a transcript of Curry’s post-arrest interrogation, she calmly told investigators that her motive was self-preservation: “Because after all if it wasn’t him it would have been me, he was going to kill me.”
Izola Curry (Woman who stabbed Martin Luther King in 1958 )
On October 17, after hearing King’s testimony, a grand jury indicted Curry for attempted murder. A psychiatrist diagnosed Curry as a paranoid schizophrenic, reporting that Curry had an IQ of 70 and was in a severe “state of insanity.” On October 20, she was found incapable of understanding the charge against her and was committed to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Curry, who died in 2015, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and spent the rest of her life in a series of psychiatric hospitals, residential care facilities, and nursing homes. She died in 2015 at the age of 98 without any remorse for nearly killing Dr. King.
“Had Dr. King sneezed or coughed, the weapon would have penetrated the aorta. He was just a sneeze away from death,” according to the surgeon who treated him. As for Dr. Martin Luther King, he forgave her immediately because he understood. Nearly a decade later, on April 3, 1968, King spoke of this close call in a dramatic at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, where he told the audience that if he had sneezed, he would have missed the Freedom Riders, the Selma to Montgomery march, the 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act and the March on Washington in which he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream Speech.” “If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.”
King ended his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech with a rhetorical flourish in which he seemed to prophesy his death. Less than 24 hours later, a fatal assassin’s bullet struck him as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.
Research studies show that depression can enhance empathy toward others and hypothesizes that King’s nonviolence resistance “can be understood as a politics of radical empathy…the goal was not to defeat the other but to change attitudes. Racism was not a political problem to be outlawed; it was a psychological disease to be cured.”
There are many MLK and Curry among us. No one is free of problems or immune to disorder.
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”—Martin Luther King, Jr.
During this time of hope and change, and as we remember Dr. King, let’s honor his greatness and legacy through the work we do every day with individuals suffering from mental health and substance use disorders.
If you or a loved one suffers from depression, Learn more about our world-class depression treatment program at our Bridges to Recovery facility and take the first step toward lasting change today.
Seven Common Types of Mental Disorders
