Black Mental Health
Black communities are not one community. Black mental health holds African American folks whose families have been here for centuries, Caribbean and African immigrants and their children, Afro-Latine folks, multiracial folks, and many more, across every class, faith, region, gender, and sexuality. The experience of being Black is vast and varied, and good care begins by honoring that range rather than flattening it.
This work holds the full picture: not only the weight of racism, but the joy, culture, faith, community, resistance, and brilliance that are central to Black life. For focused work specifically on the impact of racism, we also hold a dedicated space for racial trauma.
Some of what comes up often:
- The cumulative weight of racism, including the daily microaggressions, the vigilance, the exhaustion, and the grief of ongoing racial violence, carried alongside the rest of life
- The strong Black woman and strong Black person scripts, the expectation to be unshakable, endlessly capable, and self-sustaining, with no permission to break down or to need, and the cost of carrying that
- Medical racism and the experience of having your pain dismissed or disbelieved by the systems meant to help
- Family and community, including the deep belonging, the church and faith traditions, the chosen and extended kin, and the obligations and expectations that come alongside
- Intergenerational trauma and resilience, including the inheritance of survival strategies forged through slavery, segregation, and ongoing harm, alongside the inheritance of profound strength, creativity, and care
- Mental health stigma in some families and communities, and the courage it can take to seek support
- The particular position of being Black and also queer, trans, disabled, immigrant, or otherwise navigating multiple communities
- A well-earned distrust of mental health care, given a medical and mental health field that has actively harmed Black folks, through experimentation, misdiagnosis, forced treatment, and institutionalization, so that protecting yourself from these systems has been necessary, not a matter of stigma
- Joy, culture, music, faith, humor, style, community, and liberation, which are not side notes but central to the fullness of Black life
Black mental health cannot be separated from the conditions Black folks are navigating, and it also cannot be reduced to those conditions. Therapy has too often treated Black clients as having collections of problems and risk factors rather than as whole people with rich inner and communal lives. We hold both: the real weight of structural harm, named honestly, and the joy, resource, and brilliance.
What this work can look like at MLC:
- Holding the weight of racism honestly, without making it the only thing in the room
- Loosening the grip of the strong Black woman and strong Black person scripts, toward permission to need, to rest, and to be cared for
- Working with medical racism and other experiences of being dismissed or harmed by systems
- Honoring family, faith, church, and community as resources and holding the obligations that come with them
- Processing intergenerational trauma while also honoring intergenerational strength and lineage
- Holding the intersections seriously, including for queer, trans, disabled, immigrant, and multiracial Black folks
- Making room for joy, rest, pleasure, and liberation as legitimate and necessary parts of healing
The therapists at MLC understand that Black mental health has been under-served, over-pathologized, and too often reduced to trauma alone. We hold the whole of Black life, the weight and the brilliance both, and we want the whole of you in the room.
