The Mental Torture and Deterioration Syndrome (MTDS)

Tomorrow morning, millions of hardworking Black people will wake up and rise to face and deal with another day to go to work.

Tomorrow, millions of us will start the same exact routine to help provide for and support our families. Tomorrow, countless Black folk will literally have to crawl out of their beds and deal with the physical ailments, severe aches, and numbing pains that have persisted and developed over the years of hard, stressful, and thankless employment. Before the sun rises in the east, many of us will leave our loved ones as they comfortably sleep in their beds, only to return under the bright night stars to check on them again as they rest from yet another day without seeing daddy or mommy because of the grueling work schedule.

I have been fortunate to continuously study and read amazing works of some of our brilliant Black psychologists who have outlined the mentally damaging effects of oppression, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and slavery. Genius Black doctors and thinkers such as Dr. Amos Wilson, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, Dr. Naim Akbar, Dr. Bobby Wright, Dr. Wade Nobles, Marimba Ani, Bobby Hemitt, Delbert Blair, and Wayne Chandler have given us sound and proven mental and social paradigms that exist within the psyche of our collective struggle to be a free and independent people once again. Black Mental health has become one of the most pervasive and prevalent topics to pay close attention to as we move into the 21st century. In some way, shape, or form, all Black people living in the geographical hemisphere of North America have been psychologically damaged to a certain extent. The psychological trauma actually begins at early stages in our life.