Reframing Mental Health and Psychological Well-Being among Persons of African Descent: Africana/Black Psychology Meeting the Challenges of Fractured Social and Cultural Realities

The Current State of Psychological Knowledge Production As Africana psychologist and educator, Asa Hilliard, so aptly noted, there is something wrong with a psychology and psychological analysis that leaves African descent people strangers to themselves, aliens to their culture, oblivious to their condition, and less than human to their oppressor (Hilliard, 1997). However, this is exactly the psychology that people acknowledging African descent people have inherited and the psychological analysis that has been provided over the past four centuries in the West. Over the past forty years African centered psychological knowledge has been produced which places people acknowledging African descent and their cultural worldviews and teachings at the center of human process as agents with sacred authority. Human beings and their socio-cultural bearings are inseparable and this remains true for those professionals engaged in psychological knowledge production focused on the human psyche and its development. African centered psychologists have been forthright and deliberate in identifying the cultural underpinnings of their research. Such open acknowledgement, though uncharacteristic of mainstream western psychology, increases the capacity for objectivity and the opportunity for deeper insight into the subject examined. On the other hand, avoidance of such acknowledgement on the part of mainstream psychology has not only lead to complicity, but has also contributed directly to the perpetuation of social injustice, particularly when it comes to people of African descent. Africana psychology has examined the influences of cultural and intellectual imperialism within the field of psychology and on the production of psychological knowledge. The cultural worldview currently prevailing has influenced the shift from psychology as a study of the soul to a psychology in service to particular dominant groups in societies. Psychology is problematized as a discipline whose knowledge production appears to narrowly serve the interest of the dominant group rather than the collective good within our society. For a clear example of this alignment with the dominant group, one can look at the instance of the mainstream psychology of South African psychology which has also been criticized for being complicit in the apartheid regime, contributing to and reinforcing its ideology of white supremacy. From the early 1980s on, debates about the relevance of psychology in South African society have abounded. Given its alignment with the oppressive apartheid regime, South Africa's mainstream psychology cannot effectively respond to the socio-political challenges and mental health concerns facing this post-apartheid state. Mainstream western psychology may prove helpful for examining some of the distress created by the social context, but its incapacity to meet the mental health needs of people acknowledging African descent cannot be denied nor ignored. Africana psychology can provide improved psychological understandings from a perspective that is comprehensive enough to provide accurate insight making important contributions toward filling a major gap and ameliorating the absence of a relevant psychology. The experience of the vast majority of African people in the Americas, particularly during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, is unique in human history by virtue of the nature of the brutal, inhumane socio-political economic system of chattel slavery practiced and sanctioned by the prevailing "moral" codes of conduct and legal system of persons of European descent in the United States. Never before had the level and extent of such dehumanizing practices of physical violence and brutality disallowed access to normal family bonds, denied practice of indigenous language, religious rites and rituals, and engulfed the humanity of a people, their minds and culture with a subordinating color caste system which continues to reign for over three hundred years. …