Can I Get a Witness?: Black Women and Depression

by Julia A. Boyd

Can I Get a Witness? is a wake-up call to black women, their families, and the mental-health community on the subject of depression. Although it's the leading cause of mental-health-related deaths, depression is still not an illness that many African Americans -- particularly women -- have been willing to recognize and treat. For the first time in book form, author Julia Boyd explores the links between self-esteem, depression, and women's health, and gives vivid testimony to black women's battle with the "beast." Boyd calls on the down-to-earth voices of her sister circle, popularized in her previous book, In the Company of My Sisters, as a vehicle through which to illustrate a difficult topic. While the sisters discuss, disagree, testify, and "witness" for one another the effects of depression on their lives, Julia Boyd achieves another pioneering book of prescriptive wisdom.

Genres: Self Help

176 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1998

Reviews

[Tim Haslett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julia Boyd, thank you for existing. I have given copies of this to a number of my friends. For decades, black women have been on waiting lists to see a black female therapist. The relatively small number of black women counselors mean that wait could be years. It is a book like this that can truly make a tremendous difference. Having read read recently that black women commit suicide at a rate that is 114% greater than in 1970, there is a terrible crisis going on and Julia Boyd really is so empathic and sympathetic. I'd love to thank her for her work.

If you have read/found this book helpful, I would strongly recommend the incredible memoir, 'Willow Weep For Me' by Meri Nana-Ama Danquah and 'Broken Silence: Opening Your Heart and Mind to Therapy--A Black Woman's Recovery Guide' by D. Kim Singleton. Like Boyd's book, they are not simply theoretical. They have a narrative structure but are intended (I think) as direct interventions