Rebecca Walker — author of several books including Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence — graciously stayed beyond her scheduled time in the Hartford History Center (at Hartford Public Library) on Sunday evening. She was in Hartford to give a talk about destigmatizing mental illness within the African American community, but anyone who lives in communities where this stigma remains would have benefited from Walker‘s discussion of the issue. From audience reaction, it was clear that terms like “cursed” and “eccentric” are still used by some to describe those struggling with mental illness.
And the trouble with the dismissal of this health problem is that people, particularly in the African-American community, do not get the help they need “due to fear of shaming,” Walker said. In the African-American community, she said, what often happens is that people are told to take their problems to God, rather than to a counselor. As she said, “prayer is good,” but sometimes, “it’s not enough.”
Walker told the intimate but engaged crowd about her own battle with depression while pregnant, which she also writes about in Baby Love. She shared the stories of friends and relatives who either sought professional help for their illnesses — and experienced various degrees of recovery — or never took those steps. Using the language of a writer, Walker said “I have watched loved ones change their stories.” Part of doing so means “rejecting a narrative that’s been given to you.”
This narrative, she said, limits us. Walker said that she is interested in “reducing stigma,” but also in moving “beyond these ideas of who are are,” particularly the ideas that “do not serve us.” She acknowledged that a lot of anxiety arises when one stops “identifying with these tropes,” but this ability to reshape our stories allows us to move toward wellness.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is an organization that Walker credits for helping her when she was a caregiver for a loved one dealing with schizophrenia.
In the question-and-answer period that followed her talk, audience members shared some of their own experiences with overcoming stigma and working with groups like COLAGE. Others inquired about various types of therapy, from “talk therapy” to cognitive-behavioral therapy. Walker said, “we can endeavor, ultimately, not to suffer.”