Theory links slavery, stress disorder:

Mims, Reid, and Larry Higginbottom, another black social worker, recently taught a symposium at the Simmons Graduate School of Social Work and are writing a book about what they call ”post-traumatic slavery disorder” – a derivative of post-traumatic stress disorder. They are holding workshops to propose to fellow professionals that drug abuse, broken families, crime, and low educational attainment in segments of the black community can be directly linked to the trauma of slavery, and that ”black people as a whole are suffering from PTSD,” Mims said.

These Boston clinicians were not the first to note the lingering psychological effects of slavery. Harvard University psychiatrist Alvin F. Poussaint wrote in 2000 about ”posttraumatic slavery syndrome,” calling it ”a physiological risk for black people that is virtually unknown to white Americans.”

In a book Poussaint co-authored on black suicide, ”Lay My Burden Down,” he wrote: ”A culture of oppression, the by-product of this nation’s development, has taken a tremendous toll on the minds and bodies of black people.”

Now, Mims, Reid, and Higginbottom – none with backgrounds in academia – have taken it upon themselves to try to educate other mental health workers about their theory, and promote a curriculum and therapy based on the idea. They would like to see what they call ”PTSlaveryD” entered into diagnostic manuals. Boston Globe