Challenges and Reflections of Black Nurses in Mental Health: Navigating between Colonialist and Decolonial/Ancestral Paradigms

Abstract

Introduction: Racism is considered to permeate the lives of the black population, with black nurses standing out in this context, across different stages of life, causing illness of all kinds, including mental illness. Objectives: Thus, this article aimed to understand the academic and professional experiences of black nurses working in mental health and how they perceive their care from the ancestral decolonial perspective. Methods: It was a sociopoetic qualitative study, conducted with nine black nurses working in mental health in the state of Rio de Janeiro in May 2023, with data produced in a meeting through collective construction on decolonial care, where after transcription of the audios, they were categorized with the support of MAXQDA software (2022), and the research was submitted to the Research Ethics Committee (REC) with CAAE–48959421.1.3001.5279 and approved with opinion no. 5,555,653. Results: The statements of the black nurses who participated in the sociopoetic experimentation resulted in three categories: 1) Racism as a barrier to access in academic training, 2) The experience of being a black nurse in everyday work, and 3) Decolonial/ancestral care as resistance. Discussion: Certainly, nursing education needs to be reorganized; since its inception, its theoretical-practical reading has been based solely on a single worldview, or rather, focused on caring for a single reference of "human being". Hence the need to rethink and incorporate multicultural concepts and care practices that can overcome all structures that sustain racism in contemporary society. Conclusions: Phenotypic prejudice, in addition to preventing different people from ensuring the right to access and opportunities, leads numerous professionals to suffer physically and mentally or to give up their careers. Nursing and mental health need to be prepared for current and future challenges in a world that is becoming more diverse every day. Finally, it is important for other studies to address this issue until racism is eradicated from society and especially from nursing.