Mental Illness the Ills of Racism and the African American Experience

Mental Illness, the Ills of Racism, and the African American Experience tells of one mother's depression and the effects it had on her life, while also walking with her son through his journey with paranoid schizophrenia. This book tells of the heartbreak of a mother who lost her only son, first to mental illness and then to death. Paranoid schizophrenia took away her son's life and what he could have been due to his high intelligence. Her son suffered not only from his illness but from the disease of racism that is out of control in this country. Her son spent one–third of his life incarcerated not because he was some big–time criminal but due to racism. He spent a year in prison in isolation without being given his medications, and upon his release, he had a complete psychotic breakdown, which was past inhumane. She really did not know the extent of the hate and racism in this country toward African Americans until walking with her son through his illness. She knew she experienced hate through her nursing career, and it is something she has dealt with. Family members would pass her up and ask White nurses about their loved ones, and they would have to come back to her. Racism is a serious disease that has to be dealt with because she does not want future generations going through what we are going through now, and the only way to do this is to start working hard now to eradicate this disease now.

-- Ruby L. Johnson