In recognition of National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, NAMI, the national organization in support of minority mental health, is holding a series of Connection Peer Support Groups throughout the month. Local chapters in Will/Grundy are sponsoring groups in the area at Messiah Lutheran Church at 40 Houbolt Road in Joliet and in Mokena at Mokena United Methodist Church, 10901 W. LaPorte Rd.
“Minority mental health month was established in order to begin changing the conversation around mental health concerning Black and brown people,” said Charita Cole Brown, who is an author and educator on the subject herself, and who was mentored by Bebe Campbell Brown, a pioneering mental health advocate. Brown will be a presenter and facilitator on mental health and speaking at several support groups during the month.
Brown’s Book, “Defying the Verdict: My Bipolar Life,’ recounts her own struggles with mental health issues and her confrontation with the lack of resources in society at large and the lack of understanding in the Black community.
The month will honor the work of the pioneering mental health advocate Bebe Moore Campbell, the NAACP Image Award-winning author for the acclaimed book ‘Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine,’ among others who was a tireless advocate for Black and minority victims of the mental health crisis. Her writings and her work sparked the designation of July as Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Awareness Month by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008. Campbell died of complications from brain cancer in 2006.
“We have to start first by ending the silence on the issue of Black mental health and by removing the stigma, both in our society generally, and among our own people,” Brown emphasized.
The impact of mental health issues on Black and brown youth is particularly troubling to her. “We have an alarming increase in the numbers of suicides among Black and Hispanic teenagers and young adults. The number of deaths in those from 18 to 21 years old has increased exponentially over the past ten years, and the impact of COVID has made it much worse.”
Brown has lived in bipolar recovery for thirty years after crafting a wellness step plan with her therapist from 1987 to 1989
‘I sought therapy in 2019 to address caregiver burnout as I cared for my aging parents,” Brown explained.
“We have to begin to tell ourselves that it’s okay not to be okay and that we’re human and to create a culture where we identify the helpers. We also have to encourage people to own their mental health and to help them to develop a wellness plan,” she concluded.
This summer, NAMI is involved in a social intervention program with high school students. “Our objective is to help students address their mental health issues by approaching it on several tracks; social justice, racial equity and finding ways to end the silence on mental health,” Brown detailed.
“The message is to begin to say to each other ‘I see your humanity. How can I help you? We as Black people have to start seeing that we are worthy of being well. That we deserve to be well, and that mental health and physical health are one in the same. Our brains are a part of our body. To do that, we have to stop stereotyping ourselves.”
Here locally, support groups like the one now underway at Joliet’s Messiah Lutheran Church, are working to establish those helping connections and to help participants establish accountability partners who can help them through.
“You don’t have to do it alone,” said Lloyd Evans, the church’s Worship Coordinator and a volunteer with NAMI’s support group at Messiah Lutheran church. “We now have an opportunity to talk about our mental health issues among each other and create a way to reach out to the community and to society at large to gain more understanding.”
One of the initiatives NAMI is working on at the national level is to roll out a program to move to a 9-8-8 emergency phone system similar to 9-1-1 where those who are experiencing a mental health crisis can call for help. “We want to move the police out of the equation,” Brown explained. “When police officers are thrown into a situation where they have to deal with mental health, they tend to escalate the situation, when what needs to happed is the person involved needs to be calmed down. Sometimes just the presence of a uniformed officer will increase tensions. We want to set up a system where when someone calls 9-8-8, a trained therapist will go out instead of a police officer.”
The goal of NAMI is to create a supportive community for those facing mental health challenges. “When Rev. Jackson said the words ‘I Am Somebody’ during the Civil Rights Movement, he relayed a message that is still relevant today. The same can be with regards to mental health in our community. That is the message we want to convey in this year’s Minority Mental Health awareness Month” Brown concluded. Visit NAMI.org for more information and services in the community.
