Race and Mental Illness moved into the spotlight in New York in September 2015 when the story of Kamilah Brock made headlines. Ms. Brock, 36, a black woman living in Manhattan, claimed she was involuntarily committed to a mental institution by police after trying to reclaim her impounded BMW a year prior, in September 2014. At the New York City police precinct, the police detained and evaluated her condition for several hours before releasing her without charges. It was a false call. No charges! This should be the end of the story. But it wasn’t.
As in many race-based police stops, the initial reasons for pulling over Ms. Brock remains murky. That she was driving her car and dancing to music is not a crime, yet that was the initial reporting. “Occam’s Razor” – law of parsimony – says that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. So, as is also usual in police stops of a black person, salacious simplicity is reported – to the detriment of deeper complexities: The police arrested Ms. Brock for being African American in a BMW, for driving while black.
But there are thousands of black people driving far more expensive cars around New York City without hassle. Dare I say, as a Porsche fanatic, I used to be one of them – a Porsche driver in the city for years, free of police hassle or arrest. But again, this does not mean the absence of the race factor, as it is rarely ever absented. Maybe I was just lucky. But we are not talking about me or you. This is a story about story of Kamilah Brock and the nexus of race and mental illness that is often ignored in America.
Start of an Oddyssey
According to Ms. Brock, when she returned to Public Service Area 6 stationhouse in Harlem the following evening to reclaim her car, as police had instructed to, the police could not find her vehicle in their records and expressed “disbelief” that she owned a BMW. Later reports indicate that the police had impounded her car because she had admitted to smoking weed. So in actuality, she might have initially gotten a break.
To combat the police’s skepticism that she owned a BMW, Brock says that she explained to them that she is a banker and an entertainer who tweets with President Barack Obama. It was a case where name dropping did not work out too well because from there on, things went drastically downhill for Ms. Brock. She said she attempted to leave but was handcuffed by police, who allegedly insisted they would take her to her car.
At that point, an astonished Brock saw Emergency Management Service (EMS) approaching her. They then transported her to the psych ward of Harlem Hospital, where she was involuntarily committed and forcibly drugged with sedatives and bipolar medication for eight days.
Was this a classic case of race and mental illness? Was Brock taken away to the hospital because she was black, seemed mentally ill, or a combination of both?
Doctors at Harlem Hospital then diagnosed her with symptoms of mania for her “grandiosity.” Brock claimed that the only reason for her commitment and diagnosis with bipolar disorder were her claims that she owns a BMW, that she is a banker, and that President Barack Obama follows her on Twitter.
It is worth noting that at that time, Mr. Obama’s Twitter account followed about 616,000 people – not exactly the novelty that implied “big shot,” as Ms. Kamilah Brock might have thought it was. Brock said she tried to explain her background to doctors – that she follows politics, helps make rap videos, and had become a banker without a college degree. According to her, all those truthful details were misinterpreted by doctors as delusions of grandeur.
Brock Files Lawsuit
According to the press release by Brock’s attorney, Kyle Bruno, the police told Brock that she was “making them nervous with her erratic behavior.” But he didn’t describe what that “erratic behavior” might have been. This leads to a relevant question: could the sometimes over-the-top ostentatious or grandiose behavior that is a normal part of certain black acculturations been deemed erratic by provincial police officers from Long Island or New Jersey? And if so, was that enough to assess Kamilah Brock into a psych ward?
Brock said the experience traumatized her. She later filed a civil complaint seeking damages for wrongful treatment by the New York City Police Department and the Harlem Hospital doctors that detailed her experiences in both places. In response, the City claimed that Brock had been “acting irrational, that she spoke incoherently and inconsistently, and that she ran into the middle of traffic on Eighth Ave” in Harlem.
Brock’s attorney responded, saying, “the standard requirement for forcible commitment to a mental hospital is that the patient must exhibit a danger to herself or others. Hospital records show absolutely no violent behavior from Kamilah Brock or justification for her involuntary detainment.”
Brock’s lawsuit over her September 2014 detention grabbed salacious headlines for the reasons mentioned above – race and her claims that she was committed to a psych ward after insisting to doctors that then-President-Barack Obama followed her on Twitter, which was the truth. But the police and doctors thought she was eccentric, delusional, and emotionally disturbed, and doctors then dosed her with powerful anti-psychotics while she was in the hospital — and billed her $13,637 for the unwanted treatment afterward.
So the same questions of race and mental illness remained. Brock, the police, and hospital doctors believed the one part of the equation matched their belief. For her, it was race. For the police and doctors, it was her mental illness. But we could not expect either to accept the nexus of both.
As an Upper West Sider, I know the area of Harlem Hospital very well. Among the thousands of ordinary folks going about their business, there are often all kinds of strange personalities – many seriously impaired by drug and alcohol use, others by the difficulties of life, and yet others just seeking attention after having a bad day.
Doctors at Harlem Hospital are no strangers to seeing and treating the gamut of “nutcases” in the area – from the mild show-offs to the seriously psychotic. Harlem Hospital is not a place unfamiliar with the so-called “black behavior.” So, it is unlikely that it was a simple as Ms. Brock alleges – that both the police and the doctors agreed that she had a few screws loose without reason.
Even if the police did, once transported to the hospital, the doctors would have likely discharged her without incident. On the other hand, the police could have also acted precipitously because Ms. Brock was black. God knows there must be loads of crazy white people driving around New York City in BMWs who only get a traffic ticket and are sent on their way.
Race And Mental Illness Compete For The Jury’s Sympathies
Kamilah Brock’s lawsuit against the two agencies proceeded with much fanfare and media coverage. “She’s trying to prove (they) made a mistake,” her attorney Kyle Bruno said in opening remarks to the jury in Manhattan Federal Court. “She’s politically active. President Obama’s Twitter account follows one of her Twitter accounts. The doctors used her background, her trying to explain herself, to say she had a mental illness.”
Again, such a legal argument – that “President Obama’s Twitter account follows one of her Twitter accounts” – might have had the opposite effect on the jury from the start. It might have etched in the confirmation of Brock’s delusions of grandeur. Brock and her lawyer were not asking the jury to consider race and mental illness as an issue, solely race.
City attorney Joshua Wiener then countered by telling the jury that Brock’s attorney, Bruno, had not given them a full account of the reasons why doctors had committed Brock to the psych ward stay. He said Brock was behaving erratically at the stationhouse. According to him, she had expressed grandiose ideas to doctors. “She told them she could play any musical instrument, could ‘take her body to a new evolution,’ and demanded a prescription for medical marijuana (marijuana was not then commonly prescribed as today),” Wiener said.
Wiener said Brock also banged on the door of her room in the psych ward and threw other patients out of their beds. “(Brock) was having a manic episode,” he said. “These defendants helped her get through it without harming herself or hurting others.” Additionally, according to Wiener, Brock’s family had confirmed to doctors that she had struggled with mental illness.
At this point, a reasonable juror had a lot to unpack. But then Ms. Brock’s conduct during the trial gave them even more to consider. Under questioning, city attorney Josh Lax asked Brock about a nurse’s note indicating she was in “no distress” after being injected with heavy sedatives.
“I see you’re laughing, Ms. Brock. What’s the problem?” He asked
“I was absolutely in distress,” Brock replied.
Brock’s Instagram posts, after the incident, were then introduced to the court. In one, she wrote, “on my way to the money,” using the hashtag “#10million.” Brock said the posts didn’t explain why she’d sued, saying, “I want justice. In this country, when you’re seeking justice, they award you with money.”
Brock might have done herself a disservice with that response. Damages sought might have disappeared at that point – replaced by the damage she seems to have done to her case with that response.
Additionally, she ran out of her civil trial in tears when a doctor began testimony about her treatment. As Dr. Alan Labor started to describe his reasons for admitting her into the psych ward, “I was a resident physician,” Brock suddenly stood up crying and asked to leave the courtroom. Judge Vernon Broderick then allowed the trial to proceed in Brock’s absence – with her lawyer present.
Again, this doesn’t mean that Kamilah Brock was crazy. But a more sane person might have resolved to sit there and look them in their “lying eyes” as they testified.
Being involuntarily committed to a psych ward might drive the sanest among us to uncontrollable panic attacks – the hospital having induced a condition for which it later asserted a duty of care to treat. Claiming the ability to play “any” musical instrument does not necessarily indicate “crazy.” Maybe the doctors should have just brought in a violin to see how well that worked out.
Nor is claiming the ability to take one’s body to new evolution necessarily an indication of delusion. Millions of Americans trek to a Tony Roberts convention in Hawaii in attempts at the very same. And as we now know, marijuana is a significant neural transmitter/modifier prescribed to calm those suffering from high anxiety, seizures, and so on.
But Kamilah Brock’s own family had confirmed to the doctors she struggled with mental illness. And this was something the medical professionals could not ignore, given all else that had transpired. By default, her case was indeed a case of race and mental illness. But the question for the jury was whether or not it was a case about race.
The Jury Finds For Mental Illness
Brock testified that she was injected three times with powerful anti-psychotics while at the hospital, which left her traumatized. She frequently broke down during the six-day trial. But the jury was unsympathetic to her claims. After deliberating for three days, they ruled in favor of Harlem Hospital – concluding that the doctors at Harlem Hospital had reasonably believed Kamilah Brock was mentally ill.
According to reports, five jurors sided with the hospital and three with Brock. That Obama’s Twitter account followed her or that she was a banker and businesswoman were not in doubt. Instead, the jury evaluated the manner in which she said those things and the totality of her behavior throughout to find a verdict against her.
Juror Jerry Rella told the media, “That’s not the first thing I’d say to somebody – that Obama follows me on Twitter. It’s the way she’s saying it – that she’s important – the grandiosity.” Others said that Brock was less credible than three doctors – Elisabeth Lescouflair, Zana Dobroshi, and Alan Labor, and NYPD Officer Salvador Diaz – all of whom had determined that she needed mental health treatment. Finally, jurors also noted that Brock did not call her father or sister to the stand to testify in her defense. This was a giveaway, as they had also heard testimony that both had told Harlem Hospital staff that Brock had recently been acting erratically.
Kamilah Brock was telling the truth about President Barack Obama following her on Twitter. But how was that relevant to an interaction with the police? The jury found that she was manic, which shows that it wasn’t just about what Kamilah Brock had to say, but the manner and context in which her behavior manifested counted even more.
Brock, though, had still missed the point of her defeat. “It’s reasonable for them to diagnose me with bipolar even though I’m telling the truth?” she asked as she cried. “What am I supposed to do? I’m crazy because of this verdict.”
Per a law enforcement official to The Daily News, the City accepted the jury’s verdict as a vindication of its actions: “We view this verdict as a total vindication for the defendant officer and doctors who sought to help Ms. Brock through her troubling episode. The jury rejected any notion that the actions of these officials were anything but appropriate under the circumstances.”
A Silent Disease
A few months before the start of Kamilah Brock’s lawsuit, an African-American woman, Sandra Bland, was stopped in a traffic incident in Texas, booked in the local jail, and was found dead the following morning. Although her case became a cause célèbre for black activists, jail officials insisted that Bland had committed suicide, which indicated mental health issues. Her family later filed and settled a lawsuit. And until today, no one is sure of what happened to Sandra Bland, beyond the body cam of her initial stop and the tense interaction between the officer and her that followed. But the optics of her case had all the hallmarks of race and mental illness.
But there could be a parallel between the cases of Sandra Bland and Kamilah Brock. If we accept suicide as the cause of Ms. Bland’s death, we could be ignoring a real issue of race and mental illness – an epidemic of undiagnosed mental illness among young black women.
When we speak of race and mental illness, it should not be through the narrow spectrum of police action against minorities suffering mental health issues or the authority’s eagerness to commit blacks as mentally ill. Society should be investigating the liens between race and mental illness – looking at mental illness induced by racism and discrimination and the associated pathologies that might result in higher mental health issues for minorities than for whites.
The black community’s well-known fact is that racism’s burden s born more heavily on black women than by black men. On top of that, mental health therapy is not a part of black acculturation – even for the elite. An Argentine friend once told me that everyone in Argentina has a therapist – “the reason why we’re are so crazy.” I wish that were the case in black America – made part-mad because of our therapist because then we could just stop going ot therapy.
But as the stigma is so high and the impression of mental health so extreme in black America, even the few who might have access to mental health treatment are afraid even to accept that they have mental health issues. And the masses, rife with mental health issues have never known a life lived otherwise, so they proudly trot along. The point is that even in the definition of race and mental illness, we find a level of a tolerated double standard because it focuses on external racist encounters while denying the need for introspection needed for wellbeing.
Race-Driven Mental Health Bias
Simultaneously, the issue of mental health bias – the nexus of race and mental illness in the traditional sense, is real. It starts in kindergarten, where teachers and school counselors are all too quick to precipitate mental illness by misidentifying a black or brown child as having mental health issues. There is nothing worse than the parent made to accept that her/his child has mental health issues by caretakers who have no time for them. The subsequent imposition of Adderall or Lithium treatment then takes hold. Society then becomes the author of a crisis of race and mental illness that manifest in instability, crime, prison, and ostracization in later life – a vicious circle of race and mental illness.
So, we must train mental health professionals to recognize bias when treating and diagnosing people from different racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. Race and mental illness is real in both senses. Behavioral differences between communities of color and white America must be accepted and recognized as not necessarily mental health issues but the result of America’s segregated acculturation. On one end of the spectrum, whites and the authorities have codified and criminalized other “black traits” (teenager Jordan Davis shot and killed in Florida for playing his music in his car ). On the other end, mental health professionals erect barriers of mental health biases around the black community in like fashion.
In a recent study, therapists were twice as likely to misdiagnose mental illness when their patients were members of a disadvantaged group, compared to when patients were from an advantaged group. Other research has confirmed that blacks and whites differ in how they present mental illness symptoms to medical professionals. Yet other experts looking at racial disparities in diagnosis have pointed out that “misdiagnosis due to a different cultural perspective of bizarreness is rather frequent.”
So, negative consequences for diagnosis and treatment result because they fail to consider the effects of racial and cultural differences. Through stereotypes, otherwise healthy behaviors, especially among the young, are evaluated through the lens of everyday mental health bias. Kamilah Brock might have been grandiose, ostentatious, and otherwise over the top, but not necessarily crazy. Her case could have been one of race and mental illness or a case of race codified as mental illness.
New York has an estimated 168,000 people with schizophrenia and 337,000 people with severe bipolar disorder out of a population of 15.3 million. But how many thousands of others – men and women, might be roaming among us undiagnosed? Are the laws up to date to deal with this? Are the police capable of responding appropriately? Are the mental health professionals trained to suppress race bias?
In the case of Kamilah Brock, they did call in this hospital, where she was evaluated and committed, so we can’t argue on that count. But we may wonder if her doctors would have diagnosed the same of a white person who told them that former President George W. Bush followed them on Twitter.
Since Kamilah Brock’s saga, we have seen many useless police killings of black men, aggravated by mental illness. To a great extent, society has criminalized mental health and sentenced it harshly when the patient black or brown. However we look at it, America has a staggering race and mental illness crisis that it continues to ignore.
Resources
N.Y. Mental Hyg. Law § 9.39 (McKinney)
Emergency Admission Form (N.Y.)
N.Y. Mental Hygiene Law: Admissions Process
Treatment Advocacy Center: New York Profile
Short Term Emergency Commitment Laws Map
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