Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been recognized as a central mental health issue in veterans who were involved in combat. Some researchers have suggested that PTSD is characterized by a person's inability to integrate a traumatic memory into one's identity or self-narrative (Brewin, Dalgleish, & Joseph, 1996), while others have suggested that traumatic experiences and PTSD become central to a sufferer's self-constructed identity (Brown, Antonius, Kramer, Root, & Hirst, 2010). Symptoms of PTSD include flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia, dissociation, alcohol and drug abuse, depression, and somatization, i.e. expressing emotional distress through physical complaints (Thomas et al., 2010). PTSD is one of the most common mental health issues experienced by veterans of the recent Afghanistan and Iraq Wars (Brown, et al., 2010).
More significantly, while lifetime prevalence of PTSD in the general population is highest among blacks (8.7%), African American men also have the highest risk of combat- and war-related PTSD (Roberts, Gilman, Breslau, Breslau, & Koenen, 2011). Moreover, Roberts and colleagues (2011) found that minorities across the board but particularly African Americans are least likely to seek treatment for PTSD.
The reasons for these disparities between African Americans and Caucasians are poorly understood. Roberts and colleagues attribute the high lifetime prevalence of PTSD in African Americans with the overall poor socio-economic standing of African Americans within the American society. Gang related violence, gun-violence, child abuse, and instable families have been identified as contributing factors. However, these factors can also be found in other minority populations such as Hispanics who have overall lower rates of PTSD.
Flores and colleagues (2010) have identified race-based traumatic stress, i.e. stress caused by racism, as a key risk factor not just with regard to high risk behaviors but ...