• Black American adults are 20% more likely to experience serious mental health problems, such as major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder. - Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, February 2019

• Cardiovascular diseases kill nearly 50,000 Black American women annually. - American Heart Association, 2019

• Racist experiences bring on an increase in inflammation in African Americans. Chronic inflammation contributes to several of the diseases showing racial disparities. - Psychoneuroendocrinology, August 2019

• African American Women are 60% more likely to have high blood pressure as compared with non-Hispanic white women. - US Department of Health and Human Services, 2018

• Now, a new study shows that a lifetime of experiencing discrimination is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of developing hypertension. In fact, study participants who experienced discrimination over their life were 49 percent more likely to develop hypertension than study participants who rarely felt discriminated against. - Everyday Health, 2020

• Children as young as 7 years old recognize and are affected by racism. Discrimination’s long-term negative impact is moderated when a child understands and identifies with his or her racial or ethnic group. - Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 2019

• Black Americans living below poverty are twice as likely to report serious psychological distress than those living at over 2 times the poverty level. Black Americans adults are more likely to have feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness than white adults, and 16 percent reported having a mental illness in the past year. - US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, September 2019 

• Relative to white patients, Black Patients were less likely to receive any pain medication for moderate pain and were less likely to receive opioids - the appropriate treatment - for severe pain. - JAMA Pediatrics, November 2015

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Black Fatigue

• “Repeated variations of stress that result in extreme exhaustion and cause mental, physical, and spiritual maladies that are passed down from generation to generation” (pg 33)

• Families USA 2019 (pg 71)

  • Black people are 44% more likely to die from a stroke

  • Black women are 40% more likely to die from breast cancer

  • Black people are 25% more likely to die from heart disease

  • Black women are 52% more likely to die from cervical cancer

  • Black women are 60% more likely to be diagnosed with high blood pressure

  • Black people are 20% more likely to report psychological distress

• Stressful experiences are thought to set into motion a process of physiological responses (e.g. elevated blood pressure and heart rate, production of biochemical reactions, hypervigilance) that eventually result in disease and mortality - citation (pg 201)

• Rhonda Magee - “The practice of mindfulness can help us in knowing ourselves, becoming more familiar with the habits of our minds and our own emotional reactions of anger, confusion, numbness, and outrage when we see racism. It helps us become more self compassionate, she asserts, minimizing the impact of encountering racism. (pg 91-92)