By Helena Addison, The Conversation via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople can assess me, interview me, incarcerate me, observe me, and they can think they know what I need,\u201d said Shawn, a man in his early 50s who spent 15 years in and out of prison. \u201cAnd that can be an educated assessment, but at the end of the day, I live inside of this body, inside of this head. I know what I need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shawn is one of 29 formerly incarcerated Black men living in Philadelphia<\/a> I interviewed as part of my research on\u00a0coping with the mental health effects of imprisonment<\/a>. His name and the names of other people quoted in this article are pseudonyms chosen to protect their privacy.<\/p>\n I study incarceration, mental health and access to health care. I\u2019ve previously written about how confinement in jails and prisons leaves a\u00a0lasting impact on mental health<\/a>. But I also wanted to understand how the men I interviewed recognized and addressed their own mental health needs \u2014 through coping strategies, conversations with friends and family, and seeking mental health treatment.<\/p>\n Depressed but \u2018doing OK\u2019<\/p>\n Both\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0clinical practice<\/a>\u00a0often\u00a0fail to accurately capture<\/a>\u00a0how formerly incarcerated Black men identify their own mental health needs. That\u2019s in part because\u00a0implicit bias<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0anti-Black racism<\/a>\u00a0shape how mental health is assessed and treated in both correctional and community facilities.<\/p>\n Most of the men I spoke with said the mental health evaluations they received while incarcerated were designed only to \u201ccheck the boxes\u201d and conveyed a sense that no one really cared.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019d listen. They\u2019d ask the pertinent questions,\u201d Malcolm, 62, explained. \u201cThen they\u2019d talk down to you. And then they forget all about you.\u201d<\/p>\n A few of the men received diagnoses they didn\u2019t understand or believe. John, 29, described how a judge ordered him to have a mental health evaluation and that he was diagnosed as having post-traumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t take it serious,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t start understanding mental health and believing it until I was locked up for a long period of time. I started reading up on it and studying it. \u2026 That\u2019s how I started understanding therapy was important.\u201d<\/p>\n Comparing the way participants described their mental health in their own words during the interviews with standardized screening tools revealed an important pattern. Most described themselves as \u201cgood,\u201d \u201cblessed,\u201d \u201cat peace\u201d or \u201cdoing OK.\u201d Yet nearly all reported symptoms of depression, anxiety or PTSD.<\/p>\n More than half reported three or more PTSD symptoms, such as trauma-related nightmares or feeling constantly on guard and easily startled.<\/p>\n These findings underscore that what appears to be resilience or well-being on the surface may mask underlying mental health needs, and the way those needs are expressed is\u00a0shaped by culture<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0life experiences<\/a>.<\/p>\n Coping mechanisms<\/p>\n Participants described self-reliance as essential to coping with incarceration and life after release. Physical separation from family and community, along with strained relationships and limited resources after release, left many feeling like they had to manage mental distress on their own.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re in prison, you learn to depend on yourself,\u201d Ken, 56, said.<\/p>\n Some said incarceration reinforced existing coping strategies they\u2019d had, such as exercising, praying, journaling, reading and meditation.<\/p>\n \u201cI was always into being active,\u201d said Tay, 31, who took part in a military-style bootcamp while incarcerated. \u201cI learned how to use [exercise] to cope with my emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n Others were introduced to new coping skills through\u00a0educational<\/a>, vocational and recreational programs inside their correctional facilities. Men spoke about how\u00a0earning GEDs, taking college courses<\/a>,\u00a0learning trades<\/a>\u00a0and participating in other structured programs helped them manage stress and connect with others.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the\u00a0availability of such programs<\/a>\u00a0is limited<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bottled-up feelings<\/p>\n Many of my study\u2019s participants described wanting to \u201cdo things differently\u201d after incarceration by expressing their emotions rather than suppressing them.<\/p>\n Some directly connected bottling up feelings to behaviors that had led to their incarceration.<\/p>\n \u201c[You\u2019ve] let a lot of stuff build up and then [you\u2019ll] go outside and lash out on the first person you see,\u201d David, 30, explained. \u201cI\u2019m getting more comfortable with expressing myself, whether it\u2019s to my mom or if it\u2019s to a friend.\u201d<\/p>\n But finding the right people to confide in could be difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cI try to express myself every day. People laugh and make a joke out of it,\u201d Shakur, 21, said. \u201cIf I had somebody sitting one-on-one, talking to me about my problems, I\u2019d feel better.\u201d<\/p>\n Navigating romantic relationships was also difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cWe come back to them broken. And they trying to fix us, but they don\u2019t know how to fix us. They\u2019re broken too,\u201d said Thomas, 44.<\/p>\n Mass incarceration doesn\u2019t just fracture individuals \u2013 it\u00a0erodes romantic relationships<\/a>, as those left behind often navigate their own economic strain, limited resources and emotional distress.<\/p>\n Participants emphasized that speaking with people who shared similar experiences made it easier to express themselves and helped them navigate moments of distress.<\/p>\n Deep distrust of institutions<\/p>\n Many participants expressed deep distrust of mental health treatment within correctional facilities.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing a Black man living to 62 years old, I don\u2019t trust the government from the\u00a0Tuskegee experiment<\/a>\u00a0to the thing they had\u00a0going on in Holmesburg prison<\/a>,\u201d said Carl. \u201cHow can you put your trust in that?\u201d<\/p>\n The Tuskegee study was a research study conducted by the U.S. federal government from 1932 to 1972. It followed Black men with syphilis but withheld effective treatment, even after the cure was made widely available in the 1940s. This caused preventable suffering and deaths.<\/p>\n During the Holmesburg Prison experiments, conducted at a Philadelphia prison from the 1950s through the 1970s, University of Pennsylvania researchers tested pharmaceuticals and chemicals on incarcerated men, many of them Black, without adequate informed consent.<\/p>\n Some of the men I interviewed also reported experiencing or witnessing mistreatment after reporting mental health concerns, and they expressed fears that seeking help while incarcerated would lead to punishment rather than support.<\/p>\n Stigma and seeking help<\/p>\n After release, participants shared concerns that they would be seen as \u201cweak\u201d by their peers for talking about their problems. This mental health stigma served as a barrier to seeking treatment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not normal for guys like us, as far as being Black, African American, to reach out to a therapist,\u201d said David.<\/p>\n Some men, like Antonio, who described feeling \u201clike walls was closing in on me,\u201d were motivated to seek treatment due to significant mental distress. Others were driven by a desire to improve their relationships with their wives or children.<\/p>\n Nearly 70% of participants had used formal mental health services at some point. Some were mandated to receive treatment, while others sought help voluntarily \u2013 sometimes at local walk-in clinics and behavioral health centers such as\u00a0Wedge Recovery Centers<\/a>, a Philadelphia staple that was mentioned by several participants but closed in May 2025 due to financial losses.<\/p>\n Communities can work together to\u00a0reduce stigma<\/a>\u00a0around seeking mental health support and formal treatment, take expressions of mental distress from formerly incarcerated men seriously, and create spaces where they feel safe being vulnerable.<\/p>\n Participants named visible, neighborhood clinics with walk-in behavioral health services as places they felt able to go in moments of need. Increasing the visibility of these services, conducting outreach and integrating formerly incarcerated men as\u00a0peer navigators<\/a>\u00a0can help build trust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Helena Addison, The Conversation via Reuters Connect \u201cPeople can assess me, interview me, incarcerate me, observe me,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26504,21138,45329,69,71,70,7625,19964],"class_list":{"0":"post-140754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-black-men","9":"tag-depression","10":"tag-incarcerated","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","13":"tag-philadelphia-news","14":"tag-philly","15":"tag-ptsd"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}