Unheard and Underserved: How Medical Racism Fails Caribbean Women

Exploring how systemic bias in healthcare harms Caribbean women and how culturally sensitive support helps rebuild trust, wellness, and voice.

A History of Silence in the Exam Room

Caribbean women have long carried a quiet strength one passed down through generations of mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers who knew what it meant to survive. But survival often came with silence, especially in medical spaces.

The pain of Caribbean women has been historically overlooked, misinterpreted, or ignored. It’s not uncommon to hear, “The doctor didn’t take me seriously” or “They brushed me off like I was overreacting.” 

These are not isolated experiences. They are echoes of a deeper systemic problem: medical racism. 💔

• Colonial medicine🫀

  Has viewed Caribbean and Indigenous bodies as inferior and expendable. This led to the justification of unethical experimentation, lack of consent, and the belief that Black people feel less pain, a myth that still exists in some clinical training (Hoberman, 2012; Hoffman et al., 2016).

• Migration stress🧳

  Introduced cultural misunderstandings, language barriers, and fear of authority. Caribbean women may downplay symptoms or hesitate to ask questions, especially when healthcare providers are dismissive or impatient (Lashley, 2000).

• Survival culture 🌪️

  Rooted in religious faith, community strength, and resilience has taught many women to “tough it out,” pray through pain, or self-medicate when healthcare feels inaccessible or untrustworthy (Williams et al., 2021).

This convergence of colonial legacy, institutional neglect, and cultural silence leaves many Caribbean women unheard, underserved, and emotionally exhausted in medical spaces.

You May Have Experienced The Following...

1. “You’re probably just stressed, it’s nothing serious.”👨🏽‍⚕️

Many Caribbean women report being told their symptoms are anxiety, menopause, or depression without appropriate tests or follow-up. Pain is often dismissed as an emotional issue, rather than treated as a legitimate medical concern. Research shows Black women’s pain is systematically underestimated and undertreated (Hoffman et al., 2016).

2. “Your tests are fine, so you must be fine.”🩻

Even when test results are inconclusive, symptoms can still be debilitating. Conditions such as fibroids, endometriosis, lupus, and thyroid disorders disproportionately affect Black women, yet they are often diagnosed much later than in White women, if at all (Al-Hendy et al., 2017; Bougie et al., 2021; Lim et al., 2014; Pearce et al., 2003). Delays in treatment can result in irreversible damage and feelings of betrayal.

3. “Try losing weight or changing your lifestyle first.”🏋️‍♀️

Health professionals often default to weight or lifestyle as the issue especially with Caribbean and Black women, rather than taking complaints seriously. This bias reinforces shame and discourages follow-up, especially when the deeper issues remain unaddressed (Bowleg, 2012).

4. “We can’t find anything wrong, so maybe it’s in your head.”❤️‍🩹

This subtle form of gaslighting minimizes real symptoms as it psychologically erodes trust in providers and even in one’s own instincts. It leads to Caribbean and Black women to questioning themselves and stay silent about pain that deserves to be explored and acknowledged.

🧠 Why This Matters: The Psychological Toll of Medical Racism🧠

Medical racism is not just a public health issue, it’s also a mental health issue. When your pain is ignored, your voice dismissed, or your body pathologized, the impact doesn’t end at the appointment.

Caribbean women facing repeated medical invalidation often experience:

• Medical avoidance: Skipping future appointments due to fear or mistrust

• Hypervigilance: Anxiety before and during healthcare interactions

• Disembodiment: A disconnect from the body due to repeated trauma or shame

• Internalized doubt: Questioning one’s own pain, judgment, or health literacy

• Chronic stress: Elevated cortisol levels, which can worsen blood pressure, inflammation, and mental health over time (Williams et al., 2021)

The result? A cycle of silent suffering where women stop seeking care, fearing more harm than help.

🌿But it doesn’t have to be this way. Healing is possible. 🌿

🌿 5 Ways Therapy with Nada Supports Caribbean Women Impacted by Medical Racism 🌿

1. Validating the Pain That Was Dismissed:

Therapy provides a space to name the harm. You’re not imagining it. You are not “too sensitive.” You are not “overreacting.” What happened to you was real and it matters.

2. Processing Medical Trauma in a Safe Space:

Medical trauma is often unspoken, especially in Caribbean households. Therapy helps you explore memories of feeling powerless, unheard, or violated in medical settings, and begin to release the fear attached to these experiences.

3. Reclaiming Confidence in Your Body and Voice:

You deserve to feel empowered in your healthcare. Therapy supports you in learning how to advocate for yourself, ask for second opinions, request culturally competent care, and trust your body’s wisdom again.

4. Rebuilding the Connection Between Mind, Body, and Identity:

Repeated invalidation can cause you to disconnect from your body, doubting its signals. In therapy, you begin to re-establish trust within yourself learning that your symptoms are valid and worthy of care.

5. Creating Generational Change Through Healing:

As you process and name these experiences, you create space for others to do the same, your daughters, nieces, friends, and sisters. You pass on not just survival, but healing, self-advocacy, and power.

🌟 How NJCCS Helps Caribbean Women Feel Safe, Seen, and Supported

At Nada Johnson Consulting and Counselling Services (NJCCS), Nada understands that medical racism is not only systemic but also deeply personal.

Nada brings cultural sensitivity, lived experience, and clinical expertise to each session making space for stories that are too often erased in medical systems. She supports Caribbean women in rebuilding trust, restoring voice, and reclaiming agency over their health and well-being.

🌺 You are strong enough to face it all even if it does not feel like it right now.🌺

You Are Not Overreacting. You Are Overdue for Compassionate Care.

If you’ve been ignored, dismissed, or made to feel invisible in medical spaces, you are not alone. You are worthy of support that sees your whole self: your body, your culture, your story and your healing.

Contact Nada today for support!

🌍Website: www.nadajohnsonservices.com

📩 Contact: info@nadajohnsonservices.com

Click here to explore all our platforms in one place!

Click here to join our newsletter and follow our platforms for empowering content, trauma recovery tools, and mental health support. Please share this post to help break the silence around trauma and promote healing in our communities. 🤝

📚 References

Al-Hendy, A., Myers, E. R., & Stewart, E. (2017). Uterine fibroids: Burden and unmet medical need. Seminars in Reproductive Medicine, 35(6), 473–480. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0037-1607264

Bowleg, L. (2012). The problem with the phrase “women and minorities”: Intersectionality—An important theoretical framework for public health. American Journal of Public Health, 102(7), 1267–1273. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2012.300750

Bougie, O., Yap, M. I., Sikora, L., Flaxman, T., Singh, S. S., & Steege, J. (2021). Influence of race/ethnicity on prevalence and presentation of endometriosis: A systematic review and meta-analysis. BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 128(4), 504–515. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-0528.16431

Hoberman, J. (2012). Black and blue: The origins and consequences of medical racism. University of California Press.

Hoffman, K. M., Trawalter, S., Axt, J. R., & Oliver, M. N. (2016). Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between Blacks and whites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(16), 4296–4301. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1516047113

Lashley, M. (2000). The unrecognized social stressors of migration and reunification in Caribbean families. Transcultural Psychiatry, 37(3), 345–359. https://doi.org/10.1177/136346150003700304

Lim, S. S., Bayakly, A. R., Helmick, C. G., Gordon, C., & Easley, K. A. (2014). The incidence and prevalence of systemic lupus erythematosus in Georgia: The Georgia Lupus Registry. Arthritis & Rheumatology, 66(2), 357–368. https://doi.org/10.1002/art.38239

Pearce, E. N., Farwell, A. P., & Braverman, L. E. (2003). Thyroiditis. New England Journal of Medicine, 348(26), 2646–2655. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra021194

Williams, D. R., Lawrence, J. A., & Davis, B. A. (2021). Racism and health: Evidence and needed research. Annual Review of Public Health, 43, 105–125. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040119-094017