Black Psychotherapy: Observations of Black Psychiatrists and Psychologists

Clare Xanthos, PhD
4 min readMar 13, 2023

20 Years After “Unequal Treatment” Report, Still No Meaningful Changes

Image by Yori Designs from Pixabay

In 2003, the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) released a ground-breaking report entitled Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care. The report demonstrated the staggering inequities in both health and mental health services, regardless of insurance coverage. Regrettably, 20 years on, it doesn’t appear that there have been any meaningful changes.

This article takes a brief look at the observations of Black mental health professionals with specific reference to psychotherapy among Black individuals. In 2004 and 2005, I conducted 10 interviews with Black psychiatrists and psychologists (nine participants were US-based and one was UK-based). Their reflections about the state of Black therapy services are (sadly) still very relevant today.

The Diagnosis of Black Individuals

The overall consensus among interviewees was that in Western societies, the diagnosis of Black mental health concerns is based on the White experience and does not recognize the racialized stressors affecting Black clients, resulting in frequent diagnostic errors. As one psychologist pointed out, the diagnosis of Black patients is based on “the…

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Clare Xanthos, PhD
Clare Xanthos, PhD

Written by Clare Xanthos, PhD

RESEARCHER. AUTHOR. WRITER. Interests: racial equity, social justice, cultural identity. Co-Editor: "Social Determinants of Health among African-American Men."