Depression In African American Women

According to research, African American women face tougher hardships when dealing with depression. This is a research proposal examining how African American females rate their levels of depression. The National Institute of Mental Health defined depression as “a mental illness when someone experiences sadness and a lack of interest in everyday social activities.” The DBSA (Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance) stated that at least 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older, suffer from some form of depression. Depression is sometimes used to describe those that are sad from time to time with or without “valid” explanation as well as those who often feel lonely or neglected. No matter what

walk of life a person originates from, dealing with depression will always have some effect on their daily life. Race, ethnicity, and social class status matter not when keeps them from suffering with a form of depression.
African American females are estimated to have a 50 percent higher depression rate than Caucasian women.

During slavery, African American women were the ones that stayed home all day and cooked and cleaned for their families. These women were always told to just keep quiet and believe in God or their religious belief through everything they were going through. African American women didn’t have a voice in society so they couldn’t express their feelings like others could. This cultural aspect of African American women, just going through life and not being able to express themselves has contributed to many of the ladies suffering from depression. Depression amongst African women is very high because of past cultural experiences. African American women are one of the major groups of people that have sacristy of resources. Many times when African American women go to their doctors the doctors tend to diagnose them incorrectly or some time even give them the wrong treatment (Carrington, C. H. ,2006). African American when were always made to just deal with the problem that they were going through at the time not matter the mood they were in (Carrington, C. H.

2006).
African American women know they have to hold it all together because they have to think about their faith, and also being the ideal strong black woman that their ancestors have passed down to them (Amankwaa, L. C. 2003.) Many of the African women in college suffer from depression because of financial troubles, relationship problems, classes in school, and exams.
Many African American females in college have many tests and because of these tests, they began to stress over the different tests. In college, you are going to take at least three to four tests a semester. Stress is believed to be a detriment to academic performance and emotional health (Alzaeem et al., 2010). African American women make up 13 percent of the population that are making positive strides in life (Pascarella et al. (2005). These women are making positive gestures on high academic performance no matter the health concern that they may come against.
African American women suffer from hypertension, cancer, and diabetes which can also cause additional stress in school.

Since they are so stressed out, the health effects have an impact on their whole health. A studied showed that the reason that many of the women suffer from the different things are because they don’t get the proper treatment (Barbee, E. L. 1992.). Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death in African American women. Breast cancer can form due to stress leading to depression in African American females (Natarajan, et.al 1985). If our ladies would have more ways to relieve their stress, we could decrease the rate of breast cancer in African American

women.
Hypertension and Diabetes are other forms of health related effects that come from people becoming depressed. When African American women become depressed they began to eat unhealthy. Due to unhealthy eating habits, a woman’s health turns for the worse. When you become depressed, your blood pressure rises out of control. Strokes due to high blood pressure are 20 percent of the current deaths of hypertensive women (Karen A. Bromberge, 2012). Another factor that affects women’s health when they become depressed is their diabetes. Diabetes is a risk factor that has an effect on women when they become stressed or depressed. Diabetes can cause women to end up having to change their diet because of stressing over a long period of time (Karen A. Bromberge, 2012).Depression is one main problem that is caused by many people that stress on a regular basis. Evidence from each of these reliable sources supports why it is important for us to observe how depression affects an African American females health and socially life.