Microaggressions and their role in mental illness
Though the first Diversity Dialogue for the year, held Monday in Lowell Lecture Hall, carried the provocative title “Mental Health and Ethnicity,” the discussion spoke to everyone who has ever felt alone in a struggle with depression or other mental health issues — or even just in coping with modern society. “You don’t have to be a person of color to be invalidated,” said Tracy Robinson-Wood, a professor in Northeastern’s Department of Counseling and Applied Educational Psychology. Kristin Lee, a clinical social worker and an associate teaching professor at Northeastern, cited some troubling trends that indicate a “global mental health crisis,” including high rates of suicide, depression, and anxiety, and she encouraged attendees to consider social context and “the social conditions that are bearing down on us.” Macroaggressions may be easy to see, she said, but for many people, microaggressions hurt, too. Defined by Harvard psychiatrists as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral,...