Terrie Williams is a woman on fire, and the fuel that keeps that fire raging is the epidemic of emotional pain and depression in Black America. Depression is a catchword in the mainstream media, but among African-Americans it might as well be “the D-word”—the shameful thing nobody talks about, even as it’s killing them. But Terrie is not afraid to talk about what depression is doing to the Black community— she’s determined to get everyone talking about it, and she will not rest until Black people can freely speak their pain without shame, and start healing. Her groundbreaking new book, BLACK PAIN: It Just Looks Like We’re Not Hurting (Scribner; January 8, 2008; $24), is her opening salvo in that battle.

Despite the disproportionate damage depression does to Black people, it’s hardly limited to them. Yet for all we hear about depression on TV talk shows and talk radio, few of us can recognize the symptoms we see every day in ourselves—let alone in other people. Here are just six of Terrie’s 20 Signs That You Might Be Depressed:

• You are always too busy—never have or take the time to give yourself the care you need.
• You can’t ask people for what you need.
• You can’t wait to get home to eat—something, anything—and lots of it. It’s the only thing that soothes you.
• You just don’t have energy to do anything—you have to force yourself to do everything.
• You are not doing work that brings you joy; you are just working a gig, and holding out for the check.
• You call in sick at least once a month.

• your sister who works eighteen-hour days and hasn’t made it to Sunday dinner in weeks.
• your best friend who’s stopped cleaning her house or doing her hair or taking any interest in your friendship.
• your coworker who’s chronically late and blames everyone else for her missed promotions.
• the corporate executive who needs a bottle of wine and 10 mg. of Ambien to get to sleep every night.
• the 13-year-old boy who joins a gang because no one else wants him.

Depression looks like all these people, and millions more, because it’s an insidious disease that takes as many forms as there are people who suffer from it. So how do we recognize it? How do we treat it? For African Americans BLACK PAIN is the Answer!

In BLACK PAIN, top African-American publicist and former clinical social worker Terrie Williams uses her therapeutic training and unparalleled access to take us into the heart of African-American suffering— the heart of BLACK PAIN. Forty years after the book Black Rage explained to all of America what was boiling beneath the surface of brown skins, many African-Americans have turned that rage inward. Black America is suffering from depression, and Terrie Williams is the first person to name that pain in a way that lets us see its on-the-ground face. From the schoolgirl to the gang-banger to the hip-hop star to the corporate executive, she shows us that Black people in this country, even if they’re living the American dream, are still fighting a nightmare they can’t wake up from, the nightmare of depression.

Never before has a book laid out a community crisis with such sensitivity, such empathy and such clear direction to solutions. By showing us her own pain and the pain of the Black community, Terrie gives us the power to transform our lives. Filled with the untold stories of celebrities like Mike Tyson and Blair Underwood, and the experiences of everyday folks, this book can show you yourself, your parent, your child, your neighbor, and help you take concrete steps to end your suffering. It’s time we all came out of the closet about depression, and BLACK PAIN opens the door out of that darkness.

Depressed people are not empowered people—politically, economically, or any other way. Tired of hearing the media ask why Black folks can’t “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” Terrie shows how many of the problems that seem economic are really psychological. And until Black people can address their psychological pain, they can’t begin to tear down the other obstacles that hold them back. Addressing emotional wounds is the greatest intervention Black people can make, because every other wound starts in the soul.

BLACK PAIN was written from Terrie Williams’s fierce desire to reconnect the Black middle class to the urban centers and rural pockets…to bring back Black civic life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A social worker by training, Terrie M. Williams launched the public relations firm, The Terrie Williams Agency, in 1988. The company quickly became one of the most successful PR firms in America, representing top names in entertainment, sports, business and politics such as Miles Davis, Johnnie Cochran, Stephen King, Eddie Murphy, HBO, and Time Warner. After surviving a profound depression, Terrie chronicled her struggle to regain her health in Essence magazine and the feedback was staggering. She continues her work with the agency and she also created the Stay Strong Foundation, which reaches out to anyone of any age suffering from mental illness. Terrie has a B.A. from Brandeis University and a master's degree in social work from Columbia University. She has one grown son and lives in New York City.