Rethinking Mental Health

Here’s a quick rundown of recent Black world events.

To begin we have Lauren Smith Fields, a black woman who was recently found dead on the floor of her apartment after a date. Her family was not notified of her passing by authorities; they found out by calling a number on a note that her landlord left on her door. There’s Peter Spencer, a black man who was invited by a co-worker on a camping trip and was later found shot to death with nine bullet wounds. There’s Amir Locke, a black man shot in his home after police utilized a no-knock warrant that didn’t even have his name in it (an event that has curiously seen silence from people who are pro 2nd Amendment. It seems like this would be a textbook case of self-defense, the thing they are most adamant about protecting. I wonder what about this case would lead them not to speak up.) None of these people saw 30 years old: Amir was 22, Lauren was 23, and Peter was 29.

There’s also Brian Flores, former NFL coach of the Miami Dolphins, who made allegations against three NFL teams stating racial discrimination played a role in both his firing from the Dolphins and his subsequent interview process. Fired despite his success- he led the Dolphins to a 10-6 record in 2020 and a 9-8 in 2021, their first back-to-back winning seasons since 2003- Flores says that the New York Giants had picked their head coach before interviewing him, only using his interview to satisfy the Rooney Rule, an NFL rule stating that teams must interview minority candidates for head coaching positions. Essentially, he was being used to fill a quota. He will likely never coach again, something he has made peace with as he tries to bring about change to a league with 32 teams and only one black head coach. There’s something to be said for black people having to blow up their careers just to draw attention to issues that need addressing (a certain former 49ers quarterback comes to mind) but that’s an article for another day.

There were bomb threats at 14 HBCUs only a week ago from today. COVID-19 has killed 1 in 555 Black Americans since the start of the pandemic, and those numbers are from March of 2021: it’s likely worse now. Elected officials are bucking at the concept of a Black woman being a Supreme Court justice, painting President Biden’s pledge to make that happen an “insult to black women”. Another MLK day has come and gone, and while the public seems to grasp the whitewashing of his legacy more each year it doesn’t stop the co-opting of his words by people who would’ve wanted him dead when he was alive. Last year was the deadliest year ever for transgender people in America, with Black trans people making up a disproportionate amount of those deaths. Trayvon Martin’s murder will have been a decade ago on February 26th of this year, and the forces that led to it have been bolstered, not hindered. Joe Rogan said the N-word in over 70 episodes of his podcast and was met with a swarm of people coming to his defense once Black people made their distaste known.

A good amount of this occurred during a Black History Month that is taking place while people in the US are actively parading anti-history sentiments. The irony of having a month dedicated to celebrating and revering important black figures while anti-CRT sentiments attempt to ensure the erasure of said figures is not lost on me. Not only that, but according to Mitch McConnell, Black Americans aren’t Americans. 

It's exhausting.

I’m tired.

And I don’t believe we as Black people don’t admit that enough.

We are a people of perseverance. Always have been, always will be. Perseverance, however, is not a substitute for peace. Everything I spoke of previously wasn’t just unsettling, it was recent. It was one thing after another, repeatedly. These things compound over time and take a toll that is often dismissed as a weakness when its real name is trauma. Eventually, that trauma is going to catch up to us. No amount of having thick skin is going to help when you have an anxiety attack. Constantly fortifying the external while neglecting to care for the internal leads to being hollow.

We all need therapy, and that’s much easier said than done. The barriers we often face when it comes to healthcare extend to mental health as well. There are very real socioeconomic factors that lead to us not getting care- being less likely to have health insurance is a prime example. We also tend to mistrust the medical system, for historically valid reasons. These are all things that will be addressed in the future in another article, as they deserve to be talked about in detail and should not be dismissed.

What I’m focusing on right now is the fact that many of us are not well and can’t admit it. If we woke up tomorrow and nothing was stopping us from getting the mental healthcare we needed, I genuinely wonder how many of us would take it. I wonder who would be embarrassed, thinking that they are somehow lesser for needing to talk to someone. I wonder who would write off therapy in the name of being “strong”. We are some of the most resilient people on the planet but that comes with a price. I don’t want us to keep paying it. We will go bankrupt.

Attached to this article are links to a Black virtual wellness directory, a place for finding therapists of color, a place tailored towards finding therapists specifically for Black men (as well as an option specifically for Black women), and the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network. I did my best to cover all possible bases. Considering how dark the news often is for us, I’ve also included a site dedicated to positive black stories. These are starting points that I hope will help anyone who uses them.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m tired. We all are.

More importantly, that is okay.

There’s plenty more to talk about, plenty more dots to connect, plenty more context to give. We’ll continue doing so next week at 3 PM.