Mysteries of Mental Illness

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Narrator

Today, in the United States more than a million people living with mental illness are incarcerated or homeless. And for many access to treatment and insurance is limited. Some are trying to combat this checkered legacy and make access to mental health care more equitable. The newest biological treatments are not the only new frontiers in psychiatry. What I'm trying to do is to try to provide care, where people naturally see it in culturally relevant settings. With your son, what is the relationship like right now? Like how does does he respond to you? He's open. He's open to hear, "Okay. How you feel about it?" "What are we going to do about it now?" -

Guest

Barbershops especially for black men have provided kind a informal mental health supports for centuries. What up? Hey, men. Men. - My old brother. Wow. - Great to see you. Great to see you, baby. We're working to training these type of informal helpers with the latest evidence and techniques to be able to identify someone who may be experiencing a mental health crisis. How to support them in the moment. And then how to get them connected to health insurance. Or how to get them connected to a mental health professional. The guy, you know, during the pandemic you know what I'm saying. He was going through a lot. A lot of his people was falling off. Yeah You know, this guy I've been cutting for years. And I would never think, that he would be sitting in my chair, crying. I gave him that platform to be able to do so. That really shows the trust that he has in you. Absolutely. And his willingness and connection to you, that he felt safe. Definitely. When we talk about psychiatry, I think we traditionally have expected people to come to us. And when people don't come to our settings, we interpret that as resistance. I think that the new way for psychiatry to move forward is to figure out how communities have dealt with issues around trauma and depression. Substance use. And build upon and incorporate some of those traditions into the interventions that we develop and that we implement. -

Pastor

God, we use our own pain and our own experience to bring a word of comfort and feeling, and relief to someone else. Within the African-American community, one of the things that often we know of is the normalization of trauma. This is what it's supposed to be, given the history of of our people. So what happens in many of our communities that embodied trauma. Right. That has many tentacles never gets addressed. And there's a big stigma in our communities around mental health issues. Well, scratch it. We've been traumatized. -

Guest

I actually met Pastor Mike. One of his church members came up to me and said, "You know my Pastor talks about mental health from the pulpit." I was just so excited, because I had never heard of a pastor talk about mental health. One of thing I wanna hear about is how have we done with regard to cutting down the wait list. I know we had a pretty large wait list. We had a waiting list of 76 people. -

Narrator

Hankerson and Walrond built a mental health support network that includes a crisis hotline and free clinic. You can't say, "Oh! We don't trust God." No. It's a faith based institution that created it. You can't say, "Oh! It's too expensive." No. It's for free. 'Cause winter has crept in, have we seen an increase in people reaching out? Yes. -

Guest

My dream or one of my visions in terms of transforming mental health is really creating connection points and support. We have to form partnerships with these trusted community settings. So people can learn. So that trust can be created. So that it can be equitably accessed, you know, in society.