Redefining Suicide Awareness Beyond The Myth Of The Unbreakable Black Woman [Op-Ed]

September marks National Suicide Awareness Month, giving an opportunity to have public conversations about mental health crises and suicide intervention. The most dangerous form of despair in the Black community is often the most invisible and defined by a slow, passive surrender where we simply stop fighting for our own health and survival. 

Between 2011 and 2017, the suicide rate for Black girls between the ages of 13 and 19 increased by a staggering 182%. In 2023, suicide became the third leading cause of death for Black youth aged 10 to 24, and between 2018 and 2020 the suicide rate among Black female youth nearly doubled. 

It wasn’t until I was in college that I was forced to truly think about Black folks dying by suicide. I knew Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who have considered suicide when the rainbow isn’t enuf, but before reading it again as a young adult, I had never seriously considered that Black women might choose to leave the world in that way, too. 

As Black women, we are taught from birth to be unbreakable. We navigate a world where we are constantly overwhelmed by the dual, crushing burdens of racism and sexism. It shows up in all areas of our lives, but we are socialized to simply push through it. Society expects us to figure it out, often on our own, and rarely with sufficient resources or support. 

When I was growing up in the ’90s, the most publicized face of despair belonged to the so-called Nirvana generation. I’ve considered it a movement of sorts of young white men who held all of society’s structural advantages, yet were still drowning in a deeply marketed, agonizing angst. 

I had only heard about one iconic Black woman, Phyllis Hyman, who had died by suicide. She felt like an anomaly when I considered the Black women in my own life. No matter how tough times were, the Black women who raised and surrounded me never openly declared suicide as an option. Instead, they leaned heavily into hope, love, and faith to see them through. 

Leaning into hope and faith required a juggling act. The Black women in my life have often been the foundational leaders of their families. They were the ones everyone relied on to carry the collective burdens, resolve the crises, and keep their families and community safe and anchored. 

When, as Black women, the survival of our ecosystems depends on our strength and ability to consistently show up for others at the drop of a dime, we are forced to deprioritize our own existence and health. After we’ve tended to others’ needs, there is simply no time or space left for rest or self-care. We become a vehicle for everyone else’s survival, leaving little in the tank left over for our own. 

In clinical spaces, psychologists talk about something called passive suicide. They often define it as a desire to die without taking direct action to end one’s life. 

I believe in a much broader version, unique to our (Black) community. For Black folks, I define passive suicide as the quiet, gradual letting go of our health buried in our day-to-day survival. It shows up in all the ways we stop taking care of ourselves, all the while telling ourselves this is what we need to do to survive a world where we face unprecedented headwinds. 

It shows up in all the ways in which we let go of our health, even when we have access to medical care and other resources and services that can help us live healthier and stay alive longer. 

Sometimes it means drinking too much alcohol. Other times it means not exercising enough, if at all. This surrender, in a way, often comes from absolute exhaustion. 

Finances heavily contribute to this reality. Many Black folks are trapped in underpaid roles where the math of survival feels impossible to overcome. The persistent economic strain strips away a basic sense of security required for mental well-being. After all, financial security translates into emotional security. It provides the breathing room to rest, the safety net to make mistakes or endure life’s unexpected financial curveballs, and the freedom to prioritize one’s mind and body over money. 

When that security is absent, financial anxiety often moves in silence, slowly eroding emotional health and stealing peace. Surviving month to month plunges people into a permanent state of fight or flight, where there is no mental bandwidth left to invest in long-term health or emotional healing. 

The more things go wrong physically, the more costly those medical bills become. And then the bargaining begins. Maybe it’s better not to know if something is wrong because many of us simply can’t afford to be. In a very literal sense, getting sick is a financial liability, so the norm becomes ignoring our body until it breaks down completely. 

Workplace culture reinforces this danger. The unique experience of navigating professional spaces often involves being subject to racism and hyper-surveillance. Taking a sick day might be met with suspicion or seen as a lack of commitment, forcing an expectation that we be immune to illness or suffer through it silently. It means we are more likely to push through the fever, the pain, and the fatigue rather than take time off to heal. 

This expectation of invincibility becomes even more dangerous when the illness is invisible. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a profound, hidden culprit in our community. Black Americans face a lifetime PTSD prevalence of nearly 9%, the highest rate across racial and ethnic groups in the United States. For Black women between the ages of 18 and 34, that number climbs to a devastating 14%, meaning nearly 1 in 8 Black women are carrying active trauma. Yet, only about 35% of Black adults who develop PTSD ever receive treatment.

Mental health challenges like depression and anxiety remain deeply hidden epidemics. Black adults experience serious mental health problems like depression at higher rates, yet we receive treatment far less frequently. 

When people try to seek help, the safety nets are nonexistent, broken, or unaffordable. Severe disparities exist in getting approved for disability benefits, particularly for chronic and so-called invisible conditions that cannot be caught on a standard X-ray. This often means access to disability support doesn’t arrive until a condition has progressed to a severe, irreversible state. 

The medical system itself breeds a justified, historical suspicion. Healing must be sought from an industry with a well-earned reputation of dismissing Black pain in all forms. Compounding this is a severe shortage of Black therapists and culturally competent wellness professionals who understand the specific traumas we carry and face. 

This lack of institutional alignment distorts how we are permitted to heal. The mainstream medical establishment routinely shuns natural wellness remedies. Alternative interventions like cannabis, which many rely on to soothe medical ailments and anxiety brought on by trauma, have historically been criminalized and discouraged by doctors. 

Instead of treating these options as legitimate tools of relief, the medical community has pushed them to the margins. Most doctors aren’t properly educated on the plant’s therapeutic benefits, and those who are can’t prescribe it because of federal prohibition, leaving patients trapped between a clinical system we can’t trust and a natural remedy we are penalized for exploring. 

When every avenue of care feels blocked, passive suicide can become our default and look like the only choice we have left. But letting go of our health means letting go of our survival, and it’s what a hostile system expects us to do. True resistance requires us to actively rewrite what it means to be a strong Black woman. Being unbreakable should no longer mean suffering in silence until our bodies collapse under the weight of a world that is constantly beating us down. 

Reclaiming our health, demanding rest, and reimagining wellness spaces is a radical act of defiance we should make a top priority. We must begin to treat our own lives and the lives of our loved ones as something worth fighting for even when the world refuses to follow our lead. 

National Suicide Awareness Month must become more than a seasonal reminder. It must be a call to action for Black women and men to choose to stay, to heal, and to receive the support we need to survive and thrive on our own terms. 

True healing means moving past mere survival and actively putting ourselves on the road to joy. Reclaiming our laughter, centering our peace, and protecting our right to happiness is the ultimate form of resistance. Joy is not a luxury we wait to earn after the struggle is over. It needs to be the fuel that keeps us here, whole, healthy, and unbroken.  

If you or someone you love is struggling with mental health or thoughts of suicide, support is available to you 24/7 by calling or texting 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. It is free and confidential.

You can also visit BlackMentalHealth.com to find a database of Black therapists.