Generational Depression, the Saga of Pain will Continue

Many of us come from a family full of people that battled mental health problems. Whether it was depression, Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, or addictions. Many of us come from a family that suffered while self medicating and self sabotaging. We may not have known what was going on exactly, growing up among family members with mental health problems, but we knew there were some toxic people.

 Nobody spoke about seeing a counselor, going to therapy or taking psych medication. In Urban Communities, we are told to just turn it over to God and keep praying. Or, let it go and pray. These methods have not improved our lives or our communities. We are suffering and it is being passed down from generation to generation. It is a curse. If you look at many families, there is a generational curse that is being buried over and over and people are suffering. We become comfortable and absorbed in our suffering. Suffering and pain becomes a part of life and we expected. So we don't talk about it or complain about. Therefore we won't admit that we need help for our conditions. It impossible to get help, of you don't know you have a problem. Many of our families in the Black Community have a family history of depression and we don't recognize and actually see pain and suffering as a way of life. Some of us come from families that have cases of molestation, teen pregnancies, addictions and mental health problems that are going unresolved from generation to generation.

We saw individuals drinking, smoking and over eating to mask pain and depression. This was all normal to me. Growing up as a child, I just thought that people liked to drink, smoke, and engage in certain activities. I couldn't connect the dots and see that maybe they were trying to escape pain and abuse. 

 Mental health is still a taboo subject in urban communities. People are ashamed and fear being ridiculed for asking for help. Most individuals will go through their childhood and adulthood without being diagnosed because they don't want to be called crazy or sick. The truth is, the more we try to suppress our mental health problems with drugs, sex and over spending, we will never get down to the truth. We will never get to the core of the problem and dissect what is going in within us.

This pain continues be recycled down from generation to generation. If we do not seek therapy, closure, support groups, we will only pass the pain down to our children and grandchildren. We will only get worse as long as we self medicate. We must observe our children and listen to their needs. We cannot mute our children when they are going through issues at school, with their friends or their fears about the future. We cannot be afraid to put our children into counseling session or get our children grief counseling when they lose a loved one. We have to be the shelter for our children and watch for early signs of Mental Health problems and substance abuse. We cannot pretend like problems will fix themselves or just hand it over to our spiritual beliefs.