Sometimes the rainbow is not enuf

Women — By Kamara Jones on January 29, 2010 at 07:00

African-American women graduate students, depression, and suicide

She went to a shooting range a few miles away from Columbus, Ohio. She asked to take the introductory shooter’s course. She watched a required instructional video, rented a 9mm pistol, and practiced shooting with an instructor. After she was properly trained, the instructor allowed her to practice independently. She practiced for a while and then put the gun down. And suddenly, at approximately 12:30 PM, she picked the gun back up, aimed the gun at her chest, and fired. She was 24 years old, a graduate student at The Ohio State University, and a daughter, sister, and friend.

Unfortunately, for the young, brilliant, high-spirited, African-American woman, “the rainbow [was not] enuf.”[1]

I was sleep when I got a 7 AM text message from a graduate student in my department about her death. I read the text message blurry-eyed, and quickly assumed that a she was probably killed in a car accident. “That’s how most 20-something year olds die,” I thought. A few days later, I Googled her name on the Internet and found a story about her death in The Columbus Post Dispatch. The story was unnerving. A few hours after reading the story, while I was driving my car, I started to cry.

“Was it graduate school?” my best friend asked after I told him the story. He is a graduate student at Georgia State University studying urban policy studies. “I don’t know,” I replied, “but it probably didn’t help.” “Yeah,” he agreed.

According to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center’s report (SPRC) “Promoting Mental Health and Preventing Suicide in College and University Settings,” graduate students have the higher rate of suicide than undergraduates; women in graduate school are particularly at risk.[2] The SPRC’s conclusions were based on “The Big Ten Student Suicide Study,” a longitudinal study of Big 10 campuses that was conducted from 1980 to 1990 on rates of suicide among undergraduate and graduate students by age, gender, and race. [3]

Last year, an article titled “Graduate School Blues” by reporter Piper Fogg published in The Chronicle of Higher Education declared that “graduate school is gaining a reputation of becoming an incubator for anxiety and depression.”  As a result of a number of psychological stressors, graduate school is an incubator for depression. The workload is high. Professors can be extremely condescending.  The pressure to produce original work is daunting. And relocating to a new city specifically for school can strain supportive interpersonal relationships (i.e. familial, romantic, friendly, and professional) established elsewhere. Other stressors include “mounting” financial burdens, temporary unemployment, and uncertainty about the future job market, particularly for students pursuing research and academic careers.

According to a 2004 survey conducted at the University of California at Berkeley, for example, 67 percent of graduate students surveyed had felt hopeless at least once in the last year; 54 percent felt so depressed that it interrupted their functioning; and nearly 10 percent had considered suicide.[4] By comparison, approximately 9.5 percent of American adults suffer from depressive disorders each year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.[5]

The truth is, however, that graduate school, for her, may not have been a/the risk factor or may have exacerbated other identity-related risk factors. Approximately 56.6 percent of African Americans experience chronic depression in comparison to 38.6 percent of Whites.[6] For African-American women, the rate of depression, 60%, is particularly high.[7] Ironically, however, African-Americans in general, and African-American women particularly, have the lowest rate of suicide across all racial and gender groups respectively.[8] That said, factors such as young adulthood (25-34), sexual orientation, and chronic displacement can increase the likelihood that an African American will commit suicide.[9] And factors such as religiosity can decrease the likelihood that an African American will commit suicide.[10] She was 24. She was gay. And she was a military brat. She was also an active member of her church.

On Friday a group of African American women faculty, graduate students, and staff members at The Ohio State University met on campus to discuss her death and develop a support network for African-American women. A member of the group mentioned that African-American women often feel pressured to adhere to the “Strong Back Woman” stereotype, which usually involves masking their pain and suffering in silence. Another member of the group mentioned that she felt that there was a transfer of trauma experienced in the academy from African American women faculty to African-American women graduate students that often left them discouraged. Another member of the group mentioned that she had tried to help an African-American woman graduate student who needed counseling but gave up because she felt the woman was not willing to help herself. And another member of the group mentioned being a minority on a predominately White campus often left her feeling isolated. At the end of the discussion, however, a single question remained. Why did the young brilliant, high-spirited, African-American woman commit suicide? The answer to that question might lie in a poem titled “Wanting to Die,” by Anne Sexton.

“Suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools,” Sexton wrote. “They never ask why build.”[11]

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[1] Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf (New York: Scribner Poetry, 1997).

[2] Suicide Prevent Resource Center, “Promoting Mental health and Preventing Suicide in College and University Settings,” under “Resources,” http://www.higheredcenter.org/resources/promoting-mental-health-and-preventing-suicide-college-and-university-settings (accessed January 28, 2010).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Piper Fogg, “Grad-School Blues,” The Chronicle Review, February 20, 2009, under “Opinion and Ideas,” http://chronicle.com/article/Grad-School-Blues/29566 (accessed January 28, 2010).

[5]Ibid.

[6] “African Americans, Black Caribbeans, and Whites Differ in Depression Risk and Treatment,” National Institute for Mental Health, under “Science News,” http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2007/african-americans-black-caribbeans-and-whites-differ-in-depression-risk-treatment.shtml (accessed January 28, 2010).

[7] Shauna Curphey, “Black Women Mental-Health Unmet,” Womens News, June 24, 2003, under “Health and Science, “http://www.womensenews.org/story/mental-health/030624/black-women-mental-health-needs-unmet (accessed January 28, 2010).

[8] Jewelle Taylor Gibbs, “African-American suicide: A cultural Paradox,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 27 (Spring 1997): 69.

[9] Gibbs, 73.; Linda Carroll, “Teens Who Move A Lot Have Twice Suicidal Risk: Moving 3 or More Times can Contribute to Feelings of isolation, Study Says,” MSNBC, June 26, 2009, under “Health,” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31551946/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/ (accessed January 28, 2010).

[10] Gibbs, 73.

[11] Anne Sexton, “Wanting To Die,” Famous Poets and Poems, http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/anne_sexton/poems/18179.html, (accessed January 28, 2010).

Tags: African-Americans, black women, depression, suicide, Women