The Mental Health Shift We All Need
[Music]
for the last five years
i’ve been pursuing my doctorate in
counseling psychology
my dissertation was focused on helping
teachers feel less stressed
i designed a group intervention program
where i’d go into teachers schools
and i’d spend time with them running
through different mindfulness practices
we talk about how to cope with stress
how to breathe in
and out and how to prioritize self-care
across the last five years i’ve run
these groups and close to 15 schools
and my hope in doing all of this was to
help teachers better cope with the very
stressful nature of their profession
so there’s one day i mean it’s all my
research that
really stands out to me it was a regular
day but it’s kind of changed the way i
see
everything so i just want to tell you
about it it was
a october afternoon and as some of you
now
know being a graduate student often
means running from one place to the next
and that’s exactly what i was doing that
day
i had just finished up a session with a
client and i was
driving across town to make it to the
school where i was leading that day’s
teacher group
i remember being stuck in so much
traffic i wanted to
bang my head against the steering wheel
but i didn’t i made it i found a parking
spot
i remember just piling on top of me all
the things i needed that day so
name tags pens worksheets packets
and snacks and i remember juggling this
pile of stuff with me
and weaving through a bustling
elementary school hallway where
kids were laughing and screaming
everywhere
and teachers were sitting hunched over
exhausted
holding giant megaphones in their hands
trying to operate that day’s carpooling
procedure
so despite this chaos i finally found
the classroom where i was leading that
days group
it was me and six teachers we were
sitting around in a circle in these
small navy blue plastic chairs
and we were surrounded by all the things
you’d expect to be surrounded by
in an elementary school classroom so
there were star charts on the walls
crayons scattered around and kids
drawings plastered
everywhere so as the group started i
started
handing out the materials and delving
into
my typical spiel about mindfulness about
the
power of focusing in on the present
moment without any sort of judgment at
this point i had given this introduction
to mind one of so many times and
i remember midway through doing it just
kind of
mentally pausing like you know when your
mouth is moving but your mind is
floating somewhere else well that’s what
was happening
in this moment and where my mind floated
to
was towards an acute awareness
of the immense exhaustion just exuding
from these teachers i mean these
teachers sitting across from me were so
clearly tired and burnt out
after a long school day
what was interesting about this group of
teachers is that they weren’t a uniquely
stressed bunch in fact
they really epitomized the plight of
most educators within this country
they were being overworked undervalued
and in my opinion underpaid
they were working inside of an old
school building infested with mold
they were trying to make ends meet just
by missing basic materials for their
students like
pencils and textbooks and they barely
had time for lunch or any sort of break
i mean they would have to eat their
lunch
in motion moving from one room to the
next in the middle of the day
so as i was sitting with these six
educators telling them about how
mindfulness was going to save them from
stress
it hit me these teachers
i could give them all of the tools all
of the mindfulness
tools in the world and they would still
be haunted by stress and its multitude
of health implications
these teachers weren’t stressed because
they weren’t mindful enough or they
weren’t coping well enough
these teachers were stressed because
they were operating inside of an
educational system
that was failing to prioritize them
i remember that day the group closing
out and walking out to the parking lot
and just thinking to myself just asking
myself
as a mental health professional how am i
really helping people if it’s not
necessarily individual people that need
to change
but the systems around them that need to
shift
am i really being helpful if i’m not
changing these systems but
i’m just giving people tools to cope
with and even
succumb to these broken systems that are
failing
so these questions became burned into my
mind i could not stop thinking about
them
not just in the context of teachers but
with my individual therapy clients as
well
because with my therapy clients it
didn’t feel that different
you’d come into my office they’d sit
with me for 50 minutes a week
we talked coping skills strategies
psychological practices
but then they would step back out into
environments where they didn’t feel
supported
into environments where maybe they were
experiencing bullying at school
or persistent racial trauma or maybe
they were being pitted against a
co-worker
in a toxic workspace it was at this
point
in my education in my career
where it became crystal clear to me it’s
not just my clients that need to change
that need to do the work
it’s the systems the environments around
them that need to shift
just like a plant needs nutrient dense
soil to grow
individuals need healthy environments to
flourish
today we have two dominant mental health
models psychotherapy and psychiatry
you’re feeling sad and motivated unable
to get out of bed well then
maybe you want to go see a therapist
someone you can talk to once a week
if you’re experiencing panic attacks
swirling racing thoughts a palpitating
heart
well then maybe you’ll get referred to
see a psychiatrist someone who can
prescribe you medication to help
mitigate
these symptoms these models in so many
ways are amazing and effective i mean
i’ve seen them work time and time again
however i believe that they’re just not
enough
see the thing about these models is that
they’re so focused
on guiding the individual towards change
which is really important
but what these models are less focused
on is transforming
our environments and our systems into
spaces that actively promote and sustain
our collective mental health needs this
is incredibly
important too
i want to take a second and just kind of
zoom out step back
and examine the mental health landscape
all of us are living inside of today and
i want to do this because i want to show
you why i don’t think these models are
enough for us
today mental health rates are
skyrocketing which
is understandable we’re living inside of
a global pandemic
just as an example this time last year
pre-kobit
one in 12 americans were reporting
symptoms of an anxiety disorder
today the number is one in three
the kaiser family foundation put out a
survey last month what they found is
that
53 of americans right now that is over
half of us
are experiencing mental health issues
so the number’s all good right now right
but it makes sense i mean
we’re living inside of a pandemic the
thing is
what’s so mind-blowing to me is that
even before co-ed existed
we were facing a global mental health
crisis the numbers didn’t look good to
begin with
i’ll give you some examples just in the
u.s alone before
covet one in five americans reported
feeling lonely or isolated
from 2008 to 2016 rates of hopelessness
and anxiety shot up 71 percent
among young adults before coveted rates
of suicide were at the highest they had
been since world war ii
before coveted 130 people were dying per
day
of opioid use i could go on and on with
numbers and staff like this but
the point in why i’m saying this is
because something is not right
we’re missing an essential piece of the
puzzle if we are in this bad of a shape
when it comes to our collective mental
health
then it’s pretty undeniable that our
current models are falling short on us
in one way or another and so i’m here to
tell you this
i believe that it is time for us to
develop new
dominant mental health models models
that are innovative models that are
preventing
models that supplement and bolster what
already exists
i believe that these new models need to
center around
one primary purpose the onus of mental
health care
cannot just fall onto individuals it
must fall
just as much if not more so onto our
existing social environments
now at this point in this ted talk i
wish that i could
tell you i’ve invented a shiny new model
of mental health that’s going to save us
all
i haven’t figured that out and to be
honest i don’t think
one person can figure this out i think
this is a collective
multi-disciplinary effort that’s already
started and my hope is that with time it
grows stronger
and more ubiquitous so having said all
this
what i’ve done what i’ve made my life
purpose my mission
has been to talk to as many people as i
can all over the world
about what these new models could look
like what we could be doing better
i’ve had in over the last year some
incredible conversations with some
amazing people and i wish
so much i could stand up here today and
tell you about all of them
but i don’t have that kind of time so
for the sake of time
i want to dial in on two of the
individuals i have the opportunity to
speak with
we’ll start with lorenzo lewis from
little rock arkansas
lorenzo and i had the opportunity to
speak on the phone a few times
before and after the emergence of covet
in the u.s and he was able to tell me
about his grassroots movement the
confess project
the mission of the confess project was
to transform mental health into a more
accessible medium for men of color
lorenzo and his team at the confess
project developed something called the
barber coalition
where they trained barbers in 14 cities
across america in fundamental peer
counseling skills like
empathy validation non-judgment
challenging negative self-talk see
lorenzo did this because he believes
that barbers can serve an essential role
as mental health gatekeepers
he’s even teamed up with researchers at
harvard to prove the significance of
barbers
in the realm of mental health
lorenzo was inspired to create the
barber coalition
after he himself grew up spending time
in his hand salon in little rock
he told me about how he would go in each
day and observe the incredible
interpersonal dynamics emerge in this
community-oriented space
like salons barber shops are familiar
spaces they’re spaces where
formative relationships form where many
men can feel comfortable enough to open
up about their life experiences
lorenzo explained that a lot of men
spend years sometimes
decades sitting in their barber’s chair
and over time they go to trust them not
just to
hold a sharp razor to their heads but to
listen to the
intricate and intimate stories of their
lives
brent and i discussed that because men
of color in this country
experience repeated systematic
oppression
it can be hard to trust the therapists
who may seem representative
of an institution that has historically
discriminated against them
and so that’s why lorenzo wanted to
bring mental health into the barbershop
space
he wanted to bring mental health into a
space that already felt familiar
where individuals already felt safe
already felt seen
and already felt heard
another individual i spoke with was
ayako shimizu from
tokyo japan ayako’s interests lie in the
intersection
between gaming and mental health her and
i also had the opportunity to speak a
couple times before and after covet
and she was able to tell me about how
she became interested in this very
unique niche
when ayaka was attending university she
witnessed one of her closest friends
to send into a depressive episode
it was so hard for her to watch this
because her friend
didn’t have the opportunity to
reach out for help in the community they
also explained that at one point her
friend
reached out to a school counselor but
she was met with
invalidation with rejection
it was so hard to watch just because
ayaka’s friend eventually had to drop
out of school
despite the fact that she was bright and
super hard working
they have explained to me that what she
saw happened to her friend
wasn’t an isolated incident she’d seen
it happen to multiple peers
ayako told me that in japan it still
remains stigmatized
to reach out for mental health services
and so that’s why she wanted to create
video games with
embedded mental health interventions by
doing so she deemed it possible
to transform mental health into
something less stigmatizing
more accessible and entertaining
so ayako has developed a couple games
and most recently
she developed a game where players get
to live and work in a house filled with
characters
that possess diverse identities
experiences struggles and backgrounds
what is so cool about this game is that
it’s not just a regular video game it is
a mechanism for developing
self-awareness and interpersonal skills
essentially ayako has created gamified
and therefore a more accessible version
of social emotional learning and this
is in my opinion incredible
ayako and lorenzo have both done
something spectacular they have
transformed familiar spaces
a barber shop or video game landscape
into spaces that
actively promote mental health they’ve
shown us that mental health does not
need to remain confined within the walls
of a therapist’s office
or a counseling center a residential
treatment facility hospital
mental health can be creatively and
innovatively infused
into the multiple environments we each
interact with
day by day
to end today i just want to ask you a
few questions
what spaces in your life could you see
benefiting from a shift like this
maybe it’s the gym you work out at the
school you attend
your workplace maybe it’s the stories
you read
media you interact with maybe it’s even
your own home
what do you think your community needs
better yet what do you think you can
contribute to this sort of
collective mental health shift what i
know
is that to elicit this sort of shift it
can’t just fall on me and my fellow
mental health providers
this is an effort that requires all of
us we are all in this together
and so i end today with one final
question for you
are you ready to join me in the shift i
hope so
thank you
[Music]
you