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 Publisher’s Note
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the
subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in
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counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books
Copyright © 2020 by Rheeda Walker
New Harbinger Publications, Inc.
5674 Shattuck Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609
www.newharbinger.com
Cover design by Sara Christian
Acquired by Ryan Buresh
Edited by Gretel Hakanson
All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

 To Momma,
who insisted we could do anything that we wanted to do in life.

To Daddy,
who said, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If at first you don’t
succeed, keep suckin’ ‘til you do suc-a-seed.”
 CONTENTS

Foreword
Chapter 1: The Psychological Crisis Is Real: Let’s Fight for Our Sanity
Together
Part I: Recognize Serious Threats to Emotional Health and Life
Chapter 2: What You Can Do If Death Seems Like the Best End to Pain
Chapter 3: Poor Diet, Neglected Health, Addiction, and Low-key
Suicide
Chapter 4: The Anxiety and Depression Beneath It All
Chapter 5: Racism Is Bad for You
Chapter 6: Assimilating and Internalizing Racism
Part II: Reclaim Your Mind to Reclaim a Life Worth Living
Chapter 7: Exploring and Expanding Meaningful Blackness
Chapter 8: Making the Most of Your Spiritual Resourcefulness
Chapter 9: Being Genuine About Needing Help Makes Getting Help
Possible
Chapter 10: How to Make “Therapy” Work, When You Need It
Chapter 11: Apply New and Improved Tools to Overcome Stress
Chapter 12: Claiming Your Truths Makes Change Possible
Acknowledgments
 FOREWORD

There are probably hundreds of “unapologetic guides for white mental

health.” Though they are not likely to be so titled, the content of these
publications betrays the implied idea that mental health is the same,
regardless of race. This book boldly and courageously challenges that
assumption and speaks directly to Black people about unique issues that
affect their mental health.
Reading this book is like being a Black person living in Minnesota
or Rhode Island and suddenly awakening one spring morning and
finding yourself on Peachtree Street in Atlanta with all the amenities of
Black life and culture. In fact, the book is so engrossing that when I
received a prepublication draft of it several weeks ago, I expected to
use my old professorial skills of quickly skimming the manuscript for
basic overview of its content and general direction, as I had done for
thousands of student papers for several decades, but got trapped.
I started reading it, and skimming was not enough. Before I
realized it, I had read the entire book, word for word, and enjoyed every
minute of it. It was like sitting on the front porch drinking sweet tea
with multiple generations of family/friends (with ambiguous lines
separating the two) talking about mental stuff and handling life
problems that we all knew were important but didn’t have the words to
say what needed to be said.
Rheeda Walker’s “guide” is informative, professional, practical,
useful, helpful, inspirational, motivational, personal, comical, relevant,
refreshing, sacred, soul-stirring, and exciting. Though Dr. Walker
earned a PhD in clinical psychology from a prominent (predominantly
white) university and is a tenured professor at a demographically
similar university, she is clear about who she is. Without apology, she
affirms her identity as an African American woman who is committed
to making her field of study and expertise relevant to the unique needs
of her sociocultural community. These “needs” are certainly colored
and shaped by the racial experience of being Black and female in an
American, Judeo-Christian, patriarchal society.
This thoroughly Black-on-Black, for-Black self-help guide to
mental health and well-being has the audacity to be addressed to the
unique “psychological fortitude” and resources of Black people. It
doesn’t attempt to instruct others about Black people, but anyone who
reads it will find such instruction because of its insightful analysis. It is
primarily intended to instruct Black people about themselves.
As the title declares: It is an unapologetic guide for Black people
to reclaim our mental health. It does not attempt to “normalize” Black
people by distorting us as “simply” dark-skinned white people. It
tackles the race and culture experience as both a poison and a healing
potion for Black mental health. Rheeda Walker takes the radical
approach of looking inside ourselves, our experience, our history, our
culture, our Africaness for those strengths (fortitude) that have uniquely
fed our still-unexplained survival, resilience, and even transformed
evolutionary advancement as a consequence of overcoming odds that
should have been lethal. She comfortably embraces the utility of
evidence-based intervention while prominently invoking the “evidence
of things not seen” as identifiable cause of otherwise inexplicable
fortitude and transcendent capability.
The power that Dr. Walker demonstrates in this book is the power
of embracing one’s bilingual and bicultural abilities, or what the scholar
genius Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois characterized as “double-consciousness.”
Such consciousness can be the source of inner tension or confusion if
one is not certain about their identity. This tension with clarity gets
synthesized into creative and expanded perception that generates the
kind of readable, useful information that we find in this book. Again,
she is unapologetic for using the African-centered method of science
that freely moves between the empirical world of the Western scientist
and the spiritual dimension that is included from the perspective of the
African-centered scientist. Traditional African scholars experience no
contradiction because they fully embrace the notion that “we are
spiritual beings having a human experience.”
 Dr. Walker doesn’t use this book as an opportunity for a secret
conversation with her professional colleagues speaking in their
encrypted professional jargon. She speaks as though she’s speaking to
her hairdresser, her cousin who is a single mother, her great aunt who
still thinks that the PhD that has permitted her the title “Dr.” means that
she should be able to help her with that “misery” in her back. She also
honestly confronts some of the cultural myths and distortions that are
some of the poisons of mental health in the Black culture, such as
fearing the stigma of admitting to being beat down by life or the idea of
asking for help is a sign of weakness. “Crazy” is not crazy in a crazy
world, and there is no shame in getting it right. She extolls the benefits
of prayer and spiritual help but realistically identifies the limitations
and the need of sometimes seeking supplementary interventions that are
needed to deal with life.
This “guide” doesn’t just describe the problem with weeping and
wailing about toll taken by the problem, but Dr. Walker offers clear,
useful, easily implemented suggestions of what to do. This book is a
guide to self-help but simultaneously about how to get help. It speaks to
the mind, body, and soul in the context of the African American life
experience. Thank you, Dr. Rheeda Walker, for going where no woman
has gone before to help Black people find reparation in ourselves.
When we are repaired and reclaim ourselves, the world will find
reparation through us, once again!

—Na’im Akbar, PhD

Research Associate in Clinical Psychology (Retired)
Florida State University
Former President of National Association of Black Psychologists
 CHAPTER 1:
The Psychological Crisis Is Real: Let’s
Fight for Our Sanity Together

Do you tell yourself, like so many of us do, that Black people don’t
have time to feel anxious or get depressed? We have too much work to
do. We have too many situations to manage at our children’s schools;
too many coworkers daring us to succeed; too much family drama. It
takes everything in you to keep life going. The very effort to deal with
your daughter, son, coworkers, supervisor, husband, lack of husband, or
drama with friends leaves your emotional tank on empty. But you keep
going because that’s what we do.
Instead of paying attention to your feelings of anxiety or
depression, or the signs of distress, you press forward. You remind
yourself that Black people persevere. Even in the midst of a society of
racial terrorism, you continue on—using your ancestral gifts.
Perhaps you have Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise” memorized
to remind you of the reality that Black people have been despised, in
part, because we seem to thrive no matter what. We tap into something
special that has been cultivated for generations. When our ancestors
struggled to live to the next day, endure inhumane treatment, and
maybe…just maybe…be themselves without consequences, there was
no time for emotional problems. After all, the book of Psalms says that
crying endures for a night. Whether joy comes in the morning or not, it
will be time to move on.
Evelyn, a grandmother who helps her adult daughter raise her kids
as a single mother, recently described to me how overwhelmed her
daughter is by her life. Evelyn remarked that she didn’t recall struggling
so much as a young mother because, “We just pushed through, you
know what I mean?” I nodded, having heard this generational
conversation often, especially in my own family. But then I encountered
a statistic that sounded an emergency alarm for me. Some things for
Black people have changed.

The Consequence of Our Lost Identity

Our cultural story, as a people who endure, is why I never imagined that
Black people would become more at risk for suicide than white people.
But then, in 2016, studies indicated that the suicide rate among five- to
eleven-year-old African American/Black children had exceeded that of
their same-age European American/white peers.1 While suicide rates in
fact declined for white children, they increased for Black children. This,
in itself, implies an epidemic in Black mental health. As a researcher, I
know that statistics can change, and I hoped that this one would. But in
2018, experts who track causes of death found the same pattern
continuing.2 Suicide for Black children is increasing. This is when I
knew I needed to sound an alarm. While the alarm is for the broader
community, I intentionally address Black women as the unyielding
thread and vibrant energy that holds the culture together.
I am not a child psychologist and cannot articulate what could be
going on in the mind of a seven-year-old who would have the desire
and courage to take their own life. My primary area of expertise is with
adults. However, I do believe that the emotional distress of our children
is showing us that we are losing cultural values, which, for hundreds of
years, have protected many African Americans from killing ourselves. I
am writing this book because this is where we are—at the intersection
of overwhelming, unaddressed stress and the absence of the cultural
identity to help fix it.
Whether we identify as “Black” or “African American,” people of
African descent experience a complex psychological reality in the
United States and in many parts of the diaspora. I use both labels to
refer to people of African descent who reside in the United States. This
seemingly interchangeable use of the two labels is intentional though
the two are not the same. You may prefer to identify as “African
American.” Some of us identify as Nigerian, for example, and do not
identify as African American, though some of us do. You should insert
whatever identity is relevant to you with the understanding that our
identity is not monolithic. There are many shared similarities among
Black people, but differences exist. The similarities have important
cultural meaning. This is why, like many others, I capitalize “Black.”
The capitalization is intentional. Robert Guthrie, imminent Black
psychologist, indicated in his prefaces to both the first and second
editions of Even the Rat Was White that capitalizing Black “seemed
necessary” because it refers to a people and is synonymous with
African American.3

Suicide Wasn’t Supposed to Be Part of the Culture

Even if you do not go to church regularly, you may have done so at
some point in your life. This is true for most Black people. As a result,
church pastors tend to have a finger on the pulse of what it means to be
Black in the United States. In a research study that was conducted in the
early ’90s, church pastors were asked their opinions about Black
suicide.4 They responded by saying that suicide was a “denial of Black
identity and culture.” To them, being Black is about struggle—there are
no easy answers or easy outs. The overarching message from the
pastors was that suicide is “a white thing” and that Black people are
resilient because of the history of struggle and making a way despite
being left out of mainstream society politically, economically, and
socially. The author of this study concluded that this assumption about
suicide was embraced throughout the Black community. I think that the
church pastors who were interviewed were correct about suicide beliefs
in the community then and they would be correct about the beliefs
today. Nothing is so hard that a Black person could take his or her own
life, right?
We assume that a weak or selfish person might kill him- or herself
and that a strong-minded Black person would not do such a thing.
Suicide is presumably not what Black people do. The accepted
definition of “suicide” is “death from injury, poisoning, or suffocation
where there is evidence that the person who died intended to kill
herself.”5 Because we assume that Black people are resilient no matter
the circumstance, no Black person would intend to die.
This is part of the cultural force that is driving our conversations
about anxiety and depression underground. We won’t talk about the
persistent feelings of depression or the suicidal urges that result. We
won’t reach out for help because we stand together in denying our pain.
The reality of mental health challenges in my own family brought
me here too. Can you imagine being the only psychologist in a large
Black family? Just like many other families, we do not talk about the
things that are right in front of us. We didn’t when I was a child—
though I can add that I did not know much as a child because, like you,
I was not allowed in grown folks’ conversations. As an adult, however,
I know for sure that we still do not talk about realities that stare us in
the face. It is one thing to endeavor to embrace a family member
despite the fact that he hears voices. It is another thing altogether to
refuse professional help and hope that the problem will go away with
prayer and rabbit tobacco. Taking a vitamin or herbs and hoping for the
best is not going to help a relative who is upset by the voices in his
head. Things will not change unless we actually do something: find a
competent professional, take medication as prescribed, and go to group
therapy for support.
In the Black community, very few people feel that they have
someone reliable and trustworthy to call. As a result, the interplay of
stigma, limited knowledge, unexpressed pain, and lack of access
conspires to keep many families from overcoming unnecessary cycles
of hurt. It is time for a shift. It is time to have more honest
conversations. If you are going to reinforce your mind, we are going to
have to be honest about the problem at hand.

Psychological Distress Goes Unchecked

Imagine one of your more defeated days. Say it’s a day when nothing is
going your way, no one is helping you, ten people are trying to pull you
in different directions, and you are sick of it all. Your children won’t
listen. You don’t remember the last time that you had time to yourself,
and there doesn’t seem to be any peace in sight. Worst of all, you expect
that tomorrow will be no different.
You might have a very quiet thought that things would be so much
easier if you could go to sleep and not ever get up. Even with that
thought in mind, you maybe cannot imagine life becoming so hard that
you’d decide to take your own life. But people who die by suicide do
not want to die. They just want their emotional pain to end.
When you are in such pain, you probably do not want to ask for
help because, like many Black people, your pain doesn’t register as a
crisis. You are supposed to have the strength to handle whatever life
throws at you, so you don’t get help for yourself or reach out to help
someone else.
Before you know it, you have a stroke, a heart attack, or an
emotional breakdown or attempt suicide. Is it a suicide attempt if you
have a heart attack? No, it is not, but it is a situation that could have
been prevented. Perhaps you eat what you should not because some
small part of you is ambivalent about whether your life ends or not. Our
ongoing, unchecked habits will soothe emotional pain in the short term
and shorten our life in the long term.
Recognizing the dire state of Black mental health may require that
you reject what you have come to understand about what it means to be
emotionally healthy. Just because you were able to get the boys fed and
off to school with packed lunches and completed homework and get
yourself to work with your hair done and clothes coordinated does not
mean that all is well. You cannot articulate what it means that you can
accomplish all of this yet feel so sad and empty almost all the time.
In this book, I will help you gain the language you need to explain
what you see and how you feel, from a perspective that makes sense. I
aim to share the reality of our mental health crisis and what I have
learned about a possible path to Black psychological liberation and
well-being.

The Relief of Honesty About Our Experiences

The belief that we can endure anything is both a strength and a
weakness of our current culture. Those who are having the hardest time
can be the least likely to ask for help because they are afraid of not
appearing “Black enough.” This happens on top of everything else that
is causing pain.
A popular quote may have been misattributed to Harriet Tubman,
but it says that she would have freed a thousand slaves and saved a
thousand more if they knew that they were slaves. Whether she said it
or not, many enslaved people in Harriet Tubman’s lifetime undoubtedly
thought that bondage was better than risking death for the unknown.
This profound statement that people could not be freed because they did
not know they were in bondage—even at a time when the bondage was
pretty obvious—is inconceivable. But if the life and generation-
changing physical bondage wasn’t obvious then, the psychological
bondage and its consequences are surely unrecognizable now.
The epidemic of not knowing that we are enslaved to insane
circumstances has continued. Shootings of unarmed Black people on
the streets are met with collective inaction. We cannot kneel together to
protest infringements on our rights because we do not realize our power
to change the system. Instead, we live in fear and anxiety that any day
“that could be my son.” Living an inauthentic life of “going through the
motions,” disconnected from others, is not your freedom. Denying your
Africanness until it shows up in a multibillion-dollar comics’ movie is
not your freedom. Even if you have never set foot on the African
continent, that does not mean that you are “just American.” It is your
connection to a shared heritage that will get you to where you are
supposed to be. Before you get there, however, you have to be clear
about where you are.
In some families, it is acceptable that “Auntie ain’t never been
right in the head.” This may be true but does not prevent the family
from doing more for her. Your family’s actions do not have to continue
to be the way they have always been. Perhaps it is too late for Auntie to
be healed, but it is also possible for her to get better if the family stops
hiding her away and seeks help for her instead.
This dynamic of secrecy and the layers of pain are pervasive in too
much of the Black community. On the one hand, there is a culture of
staying out of others’ business or personal affairs. On the other hand,
doing so limits options for getting support when it is needed. Add
another layer of being perceived as weak—and getting help isn’t worth
the effort. Poor communication and unresolved hurt could be addressed
if there weren’t so many layers of pain. It’s an ugly cycle, but it is one
that you can begin to chip away at.

You Need Psychological Fortitude

Researchers, experts, those who provide mental health services, and
those who receive mental health services all acknowledge the “mental”
aspect of psychology. But this word triggers visions of being “crazy”
and “out of control.” It’s inaccurate, but perceptions matter. Some may
feel that they will be disregarded for a mental “issue,” but there is
something about the word “crazy” that is like throwing a rock at a bee’s
nest. I don’t know how such an intense reaction came about. It just is.
To overhaul our thinking going forward, let’s use “psychological
fortitude.”
Others have referred to “mental fortitude” and “mental toughness”
more broadly as a type of psychological resilience—resilience that is
the ability to withstand, endure, persevere through, and recover from
difficult situations. People of African descent in the United States and
around the world (individually and collectively) need high
psychological fortitude. You need so much more than mental health or
“well-being” in this era of discrimination, invisibility, and
psychological warfare. You need an impermeable web of protection for
your mind.
Even if you do not use sunscreen regularly or at all, think about
how SPF, or sun protection factor, works. Of course, you can get by
without it, but the reality is that it is recommended to protect you from
harmful UVB rays that cause cancer. It is true that we are less likely
than white people to be diagnosed with skin cancer, but when we do get
it, we are more likely to die from it. SPF protection is assigned different
number values, such as SPF 15 or 50. The crude reason for the SPF
number is that it tells you how long you can stay in the sun without
burning when you are wearing a certain level of a product. Some
people, depending on skin type, need higher SPF than others.
This may be true for you regarding your “PF,” or psychological
fortitude, needs. I will reference this throughout the book. It is not a
one-size-fits-all phenomenon. Instead, what you (or your loved one)
need depends on a combination of how much exposure you have to life
stress, discrimination, and relationship problems and your internal mind
and body states. Some people deal with life situations differently and
can endure more than others. If you (or someone you care about) cannot
take on as much as someone else, that does not make you either weak
or crazy. You just have to prepare differently and live your life
unapologetically for you.
Sunscreen is sometimes waterproof, but after a while, it has to be
reapplied to be effective. You often forget to maintain your protection
as you are constantly distracted with all of the things that you need to
do. You are distracted by all of the people that you worry over. You are
distracted by all of the things you do for others rather than taking time
for yourself—taking time to sit, reflect, and think about what is
important and how you can re-up your psychological fortitude.
Similarly, with PF, we cannot rely on the same level of effort that
protected us during certain times of our lives to simply remain intact.
We must do things differently. We must “reapply” our protections. Life
can be hard especially if you are ill-equipped to manage the challenges
that will come. Just like your melanin does not fully protect you from
the sun, one boost to your PF (such as a single getaway with girlfriends
or an inspirational Sunday service) does not protect you from the
serious and ongoing threats to your well-being.
In the Bible, where it says to “put on the full armor,” I suspect that
armor comes in different forms and types. We will revisit faith in
chapter 8, but know that the armor or protection to your psychological
fortitude must match the situation. Too often, we do the equivalent of
taking an umbrella out in a hurricane. An umbrella is inadequate in
storms when we should stay home and shelter in place. Yes, sometimes
you need to cancel the commitment and stay home (or not make the
commitment in the first place). Know also that just because what
you’ve done in the past worked, does not mean that it will always work.
Running around on five hours of sleep worked when you were twenty-