Mental Illness Among Native and Indigenous Communities In The United States

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Mental Illness Among Native and Indigenous Communities In The United States
Thursday, May 5, 2022 by Renee D. Warring

Mental Illness Among Native and Indigenous Communities In The United States

These people make up about 1.5% of the U.S. population. Over 19% of the people reported having a mental illness in the past year. That is over 827 thousand people, which is enough to fill every major league baseball stadium on the East Coast twice. The term indigenous refers to all groups who lived in the U.S. prior to colonization by European settlers. This population is a very complex society that lived and thrived here centuries before Europeans. The colonizers called the indigenous people Indians because they thought that they were in India. The native people prefer using their original nation names they had been known by for thousands of years. There were approximately 100 million indigenous people, thousands of tribes and over 200 indigenous languages.

Today, there are over 574 federally recognized native nations (variously called tribes, nations, bands, pueblos, communities and native villages.) There are countless diverse cultures, traditions and histories within those nations.

Although there is a huge amount of diversity among indigenous communities in the U.S., they share some common cultural threads. For example: having a close attachment to land and nature, sharing connectedness with past and with others in the community, nurturing strong family bonds, following the wisdom of Elders and fostering meaningful traditions are strong factors commonly shared as part of one’s indigenous identity.

The indigenous people were attached to the land. Their forced removal from the land caused food shortages and, in some cases starvation. While this deadly journey occurred in the early 1830’s, the effects of the historical trauma and economic impact is still felt today.

Mental health and emotional well-being among Native people are often closely tied to cultural traditions of prayer and ceremony. In recent generations, these supportive cultural traditions have been endangered by forced assimilation. The process of forced assimilation included children being forcefully separated from their communities to be educated in boarding schools, where their Native culture and languages were discouraged through extreme discipline, violence and death.

Thousands of indigenous people are suffering from multi-generational trauma. The result of this trauma includes mental illness, substance use disorders and suicide. Some studies have shown alcohol and other drug use at younger ages, and at higher rates than for other ethnic groups. And suicide rates for Native youth are exceedingly high over double the rate of white youth.

RESOURCES:

https://www.nami.org/Your-Journey/Identity-and-Cultural-Dimensions/Indigenous

https://www.mhanational.org/issues/native-and-indigenous-communities-and-mental-health

Signed By: Renee D. Warring Founder Of Uniquely And Wonderfully Made Ministries

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