African American Mental Health Sociology

Racism Proven In the years 1932 to 1972 the U.S. public health service conducted an experiment on 399 black men with the early stages of syphilis. From this study the PHS concluded that these men had no idea that they had the disease. The study showed told that they were being treated for “bad blood” disease and that the treatment was not only right but that it was prolonging the disease.

MENTAL HEALTH: BLACK COMMUNITY Mental Health in the Black community has rapidly grown overtime. According to the Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, African Americans are 20% more likely to experience serious mental health problems than the general population. (Mental Health American p. 3) Mental health disorder is popular in the Black community. Which can include: depression, ADHD and PTSD, which usually stem from either a violent past or background.

The John Hopkins Hospital was not the only place that violated people with color in this way. A study was done in Macon County, Alabama with black male patients who had syphilis. This study was designed to find out a history

The Tuskegee study of Untreated Syphilis began in 1932, mainly designed to determine the history of untreated latent syphilis on 600 African American men in Tuskegee, Alabama. 201 out of 600 men were non-syphilitic just unknowingly involved in the study as a control group This study is known to be “the most infamous biomedical research study in the U.S history”. Most of these men had never visited a doctor and they had no idea what illness they had. All of the men agreed to be a participant thinking they were being treated for “bad blood” and plus they were given free medical care and meals.

POSITION PAPER ON MENTAL HEALTH STIGMA 1. The Air Force should do more to eradicate the stigma associated with airmen who seek help and receive mental health care. Mental health treatment has carried a significant stigma in the general public and among military members. The Department of Defense and the Air Force have taken significant steps to improve access to mental healthcare and remove the stigma associated with mental health treatment. Current Air Force mental health screening options are ineffective and inefficient.

This was due to the misconception that that blacks did not feel the same pain as whites (Ward, Tom. " Author recounts history of medical racism”). Along with all the pain and lives sacrificed, many studies and experiments yielded no

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896, 163 US 537) For centuries people of African descent have suffered of inhumane treatment, discrimination, racism, and segregation. Although in the United States, and in other countries, mistreatment and marginalization towards African descendants has stopped, the racism and discriminations has not.

Introduction James H. Jones authored the book Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment was a study of 600 African American males that started in 1932 and ended in 1972 (Jones, 1993, p. 1) The study was not beneficial. This paper will summarize the book Bad Blood as well as address theoretical perspectives, methodology, and ethics of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.

In the movie “Miss Evers Boys”, Nurse Eunice Evers takes an offer to work with two doctors on a program that was federally funded to treat patients afflicted with the syphilis disease in Tuskegee Alabama. The patients were only men and they agreed to take part in it because of the free treatment. After a while the program ended and money was offered to conduct an experiment. The experiment was the study of the effects of the syphilis disease on these men, specifically African Americans, whom didn’t receive treatment. Nurse Evers finds out from doctor Brodus that the four hundred plus men along with 200 uninfected men who served as controls, will be studied and not treated.

It has now been a quarter of a century, and yet the images and heartache that still evolve when the words "Tuskegee Syphilis Study" are brought up, still haunts people around the world and touches upon many professionals such as social workers, medical examiners, and so forth. Sometimes people hear about this disgusting human experiment in a highly visible way directed to the entire country as an example of what we as a country and people, in general, should not do. This occurred when the study first made national news in 1972, when President Clinton offered a formal apology, or when Hollywood actors star in a fictionalized television movie of the story. On the other hand the audience may become fainter: kept alive only by memories and stories told in the African American community, in queries that circulate over the world wide web and radio talk shows, or even in courses such as this one being taught by social workers, historians, sociologists, or bioethicists. This is neither the first nor the last unethical human experiment done under the human study for the medical purposes umbrella, basically stating it is ok to sacrifice a few people in the name of medical research.

The Tuskegee Experiment The Tuskegee experiment was a mind blowing experiment that was conducted by the Public Health Service (PHS). This experiment took place between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama and lasted for forty-years. It affected many African-American males, who were used as human “guinea pigs” in order to track the movement of Syphilis and how long the disease will take to kill someone. The men used for the experiment was not aware that they were a part of this study; instead they thought that they were being treated for having “bad blood”. The U.S Public Health Services gathered 399 black males who were affected with the disease and 201 without it, who were offered free health care and insurance for their participation.

According to Carol A. Heintzelman (2003, Vol. 10, No. 4), the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the African American male was the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history. The study began in 1932 in Macon County, Alabama, where the government used 600 men in a forty-year experiment. The purpose of the Tuskegee study was to record the history of syphilis in blacks, but to ultimately determine if syphilis had the same effect on African Americans as whites. The African American men were told that they were receiving free “treatment” for “bad blood”, in which case they thought they were being treated for different ailments. But in actuality they were being injected with syphilis and watched to see how their

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (TSE) in Macon county, Alabama started in 1932 with a team of doctors and nurses, Dr. Raymond A. Vonderlehr, Dr. Eugene Gribble, and Nurse Eunice Rivers from the United States Public Health Service and the Tuskegee Institute set out to relieve the Syphilis epidemic in the rural black populations in America. Nearly 500 African-American people entered this study expecting to be treated and instead, about 128 died due to Syphilis and Syphilis related complications and hundreds more were prevented from receiving treatment – penicillin - for forty years when funding ran out. Syphilis as a disease is incredibly destructive, it is sexually or congenitally transmitted by the bacteria Treponema pallidum its initial symptoms

There is increasing evidence on mental health disparities. Studies show that minorities are more likely to delay or not seek mental health care, receive less adequate care, and/or terminate care sooner (McGuire et al., 2008). These disparities in receiving care arise due to

This study was referred to as the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis