Kareem:

May is mental health awareness month it is so important for us to bring attention to this issue. Some may suffer from some form of mental ailment and don’t even know it. So by having this conversation it is the beginning of a deeper understanding. For us to be more aware of not only our mental health but also those we hold close.

 

Art:

Mental Health: Is something that is close to my heart. I may be down but not out, meaning I’m incarcerated here at Graterford Prison but I play my part in helping all the prisoners who have mental health problems. I am a CPS (Certified Peer Support ) Specialist and I help people deal with there mental health problems. We all need to realize that there is hope, and we have the ability to overcome the challenges that face us. Most times, all it takes is to have someone to talk to or someone to listen. When I’m not working, I find myself helping everybody, even people who don’t have mental illness. Please help someone with Mental Health problems today and it will be a blessing for you tomorrow.

Arthur T. Wyche / CPS worker Graterford Prison ♥

 

Charles Karim:

If we are ever going to get a handle on the mental health illnesses that plague America, we first have to admit that this nation has exceptional roots that have corrupted the hearts, minds, and even souls of Americans.

 

Abnormal behavior has consequences on a collective level, as a result of marginalization of different people in the country. America first deprived Africans their human rights and all sense of being a human being. The repression of their natural rights was justified through religious leaders and law.

 

Women were also deprived of their natural rights and common decency, as a result of building a society on race, class, gender, and wealth. The separate classes of people creates conflicts within society.

 

The first step in changing thoughts should be teaching in all schools and classes that it is one human family we are not in a race, but one family created by GOD. Maybe that would start healing the confused minds of the children.

The most oppressed group in the society was and still remains Africans. Evil, inferior, and cursed was marked by skin color. Eventually if you had one drop of negro blood you were considered non-white. If you were a non-white male you could not own property, vote, nor could you marry anyone outside of your race.

 

The Legal Construction of Race was not created by accident. White as a people was invented by Virginia in the 17th century by slave owners and colonial rulers. White replaced the terms Christian and “Englishmen” to distinguish European colonists from African and indigenous people. After the rebellion of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 during which indentured servants of European and African descent had united against the colonial elite, the ruler had to separate the servants on the basis of skin color and continental origin. The creation of white meant giving privileges to come while denying them to others with the justification of biological and social inferiority.

 

Mental Health Month can only take on meaning when the well intended Psychologists and other mental health professionals along with historians can sit down and ask the question. How did the horrible, deplorable, inhumane period of slavery and Jim Crow create mental illnesses in the slave population, but as well, as the so called white population? The questions must be answered and studied of how these centuries of violent imprisonment, brutal beatings and castrations, hangings and burnings, underemployment and poverty created too many mental illnesses than I am able to qualify. But, a reasonable human being would have to admit, we have an obligation to study the shame and find a solution to the continued virus of a country that intentionally infected the white race to believe in white supremacy adn to treat those human beings who are black, brown, red, tan, yellow and purple differently and with humiliation and violence.

 

My introduction to Mental Health Month is necessary if we are going to make a serious effort in understanding why are 17,000,000 children suffering mental illness in our schools. On May 7, 2018 one of the news station doctors on CNN stated 17 million students are suffering mental illness and we need to do something about it.

 

Psychopath is one that has a personality disorder, especially one manifesting in aggressively antisocial behavior. Neurotic is a disease of the nervous system abnormality disorders of the mind and emotions. Anxiety and phobia, abnormal behavior symptoms.

 

These mental disorders have been played out by the men who started this nation. There is mental disease when you steal a land from its original people, exterminate those innocent people, then you travel 9,000 miles to enslave African people to work on the land you stole from the Indians. There is a complete picture of severe mental illness in the group of European men who visioned such a hell for other people who had beautiful skin color.

 

The violence inflicted can never be defined in words. The wealth gained can never be added up. The horror experienced, history is unable to recapture.

 

The mental illness did not stop at the extermination, slavery, but was put into law and the Constitution. The white supremacy laws were politics, statutes, rules regulations, housing medical care, and religious worship. Every aspect of life in America was invented and made out of hate, violence against the body, soul and minds of people called black. All other skin colors followed in like order.

 

Stop for one moment and open your eyes to what we have inherited. We should be able to see why we have such violence which is a result of mental illnesses. The men who constructed the nation were sick men. They had to be if we are to accept the definition of the litany of mental illnesses established in the healthy community, who are our scientists and the very best.

 

Could anyone do what I have just described in a sane mind? No. Does materialism cause men and women to lose their minds in order to obtain wealth? Was the poverty and suffering in Europe so acute and demoralizing, should we justify the extreme crimes committed by europeans against people of color, specifically Africans? How could a reasonable person rationalize such system and sanction it as Divine Destiny, adding a footnote that black skin is cursed by God, thus we must enslave and enslave these heathens.

 

Beginning in the 15th century the religious leaders certified the justification for brutal slavery and domination forever. It has yet to vanish. The capitalist vision would never have come true without slavery. Today the virus remains active as ever.

 

The mental illnesses is part of the American culture. It is the personality of America. Until we engineer a cure for the centuries of mental abuse and denial, massive incarceration, police murdering citizens who should not be shot to death. Until we admit we are a nation of people who love violence more than we love our wives, children, and others, there is a disconnect somewhere in our minds. When we want it all and do not share the earth’s wealth with others. The mind of those who practice the belief that those who have become wealthy had no help and we did it on our own is sick. Because every one of us went to public schools, used public hospitals, received college loans and grants, that come from the taxes that poor people pay. Poor pay more. So nobody wealthy did it on their own. The collective pennies made it possible for you to get a GI Bill after the second world war, and money was given to you for a home without interest. But the black soldier never received those free benefits. The point is we who made it big time could take the first step in the nation’s mental health and recognize that European skin brings privileges and opportunity that all others don’t get or have.

 

The nations drug addictions, alcohol, eating disorders, sex and violence are a result of the nature of our structural systems that do not teach caring, sharing, oneness, true history, and above all Love. Love is not the diet. Abuse, power, domination, and false narratives remain the doctrine of America.

 

It seems like the essence of love has been expatriated from the great experiment. America is the new world. The new world was established from the worse in man. We have to remove this disease and create the real human being. Only love can stimulate the heart to act. Dr. Martin Luther King, whom I always quote, because he saw the key to our national illnesses, Love was the doctrine of all the Prophets, men who represent the various religions. They all had to stand up against the elite rulers of their times, who were ruling with violence, slavery, racism, and women were never considered part of the discussion.

 

Our journey in this nation has brought us to a point that we have to consider whether we are being ruled by people who are mentally unfit. If so, how do we bring change and healing?

 

If we only want to change the hands of power, but continue worshipping the laws and rules that were written by mentally challenged persons, why are we upset with a teenager pick up a rifle and goes to school and eliminates as many people as he can shoot?

 

The adult community are responsible for the mental illnesses of the 17,000,000 children whom have been diagnosed as suffering mental illnesses today. Most of the shooters seemed to be lonely, unloved, and left out of the human affairs we associate with Love.

 

Thank you for reading my article of love.

Charles Karim Diggs AK-7945, Box 244 Graterford, PA 19426