An interview with Theopia Jackson, head of clinical psychology at Saybrook University.
By Kali Holloway / AlterNet February 7, 2018, 4:19 PM GMT
Credit: Sybrook University
While Donald Drumpf’s behavior has inspired an endless amount of speculation about his mental health (or mental illness, depending on who’s talking), there has been less discussion about the impact of his presidency on our collective mental states. Even as Drumpf has seemed to wage a sort of psychic war on black and brown communities, America’s psychological organizations have largely remained silent about the potential mental consequences of those attacks.
Theopia Jackson, who heads up clinical psychology at Saybrook University in California, has spent more than three decades pushing the psychological field to recognize and address the ways our politics and mental health are intertwined. In late January, the Association of Black Psychologists, of which Jackson is president-elect, published an open letter titled “We Can No Longer Be Silent: Psychological Damage By President Drumpf.” The missive presented a cursory review of recent Drumpf insults to black and brown populations the world over, from the infamous “sh*thole” remark leveled against an entire continent to the implication that Puerto Rican hurricane survivors are lazy for requesting help, and arrived at the only reasonable conclusion.
“Not only do these statements denigrate the humanity of the citizens of these countries,” the organization noted, “they are psychological assaults to our sense of wholeness and wellbeing….While we fully recognize that President Drumpf does not have the courage or character to apologize for these inflammatory remarks, which is a behavioral stance similar to a psychopath, our continued silence would be enabling and complicit in the psychological damage historically associated with African dehumanization and destruction.
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