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Lay My Burden Down: Unraveling Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis among African-Americans

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Drs. Poussaint and Alexander poises thought provoking questions on the rise of African American suicides especially among young males. The authors states, if African Americans endured over three centuries of slavery and Jim Cow laws without succumbing to hopelessness and self negation, why is their a surge in suicides today? Is crime and poverty, (the catalysts of hopelessness) contributing to the demise of young African American males? Is the participation of young African Americans in drug and alcohol abuse, unsafe sex, a form suicide, related to unfulled dreams and a feeling of hoplessness? The authors set out to answer these questions in the context of the pervasiveness of racism, which greatly contributes to a "mental health crisis" which is tightening its grip among young African Americans.