Minding our Mental Health

 From the 5/14/2021 newsletter

 

Perspective/Opinion

 

Minding our Mental Health

 

Toni Gray - Office of Diversity and Inclusion

 

Ms. Gray writes about her family’s experiences and how unconscious bias disproportionally affects communities of color …

 

I was nineteen when I got the call. My mom was in the hospital. She had swallowed several pills. She had attempted suicide. The emotions that filled my body included anger, sadness, shame, and back to anger. My mom, a mother of seven, felt that the best thing she could do to solve her anguish, her sadness, was to take her own life and leave the lives that she had help create; searching for answers and never getting them.

Fortunately, my mom survived, but she would continue to deal with depression and anxiety. It is something that runs in our family, and I would soon lose two cousins at early ages to suicide.

As I reflect on why I wanted to write about this painful subject, it was clear that my personal experience was important to me. One of my favorite quotes is: “Make your mess your message.” Isn't it true how so many of us suffer in silence because we are ashamed of the personal struggles that we face, the trauma that we hold, and the doubts that we cater to? They hold us in a guilty place where we do not often know who we can turn to and trust with our deepest, painful secrets.

However, mental health is becoming less of a stigma and I am so grateful for that. We are opening up the door for conversation and connection which allows compassion to reign. But we dare remind ourselves that part of the mental health stigma depends on the color of your skin and your culture.

In the African American/Black community, there is a strong spiritual basis that we hold to our hearts that is handed down in tradition by our great grandmothers and grandfathers, and our ancestors. That is the idea that a higher power can heal all our illnesses. And that if we have depression or anxiety, we are not relying on the higher power enough which compounds the feelings of guilt that we may already be holding. Our faith is called into question. This stigma has plagued the African American/Black community for many decades. Besides that, we still have the effects of systemic racism where African American/Blacks were denied access to health care and now even in the 21st century health care still remains an access and economic issue plagued with unconscious biases.

When you are trying to open up your heart with innermost thoughts, you want someone that you can trust and someone who may relate to you. Compounded by the economic restraints and access to therapist is that often you cannot find a therapist that looks like you if you are a person of color. They say representation matters. I second that and elevate that it is imperative. People feel connected to people who look like them in a society that villainizes you for looking a certain way. We need to find people who can relate to the unique societal struggles that people of color face.

As an institution, I believe we are truly committed to creating equity in healthcare. We are committed to building awareness with intentionality around intersectionalities that people come in with and finding ways to address unconscious biases that impact health care outcomes for people of color. That includes the mental strain of poverty, police brutality and profiling, the killing of Black and Brown bodies by police officers, on top of the ongoing effects of this pandemic. We have much work to do in the mental health space, but I am grateful that we are now understanding that our mental health matters just like any other health concerns we may have.

As I reflect on my mom’s journey of resilience, I am comforted by her story. She realized the need to see a therapist to get the tools she needed to deal with her depression and anxiety. Hearing stories like this makes us feel not so alone in our pain. We are human; we bend but we do not have to break. However, we need the resources accompanied by compassion so that we can stand up straight again and embrace a full life we all deserve to live.

 

Toni Gray serves as the Learning and Growth Program Coordinator in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She’s been with MCW for 10 years. She oversees, leads, and creates learning and growth experiences in the equity, diversity, and inclusion space.