Health
-
I Just Want to Be 'Normal,' and I Need a Therapist to Convince Me It Doesn't Exist
“It is weird?” I asked, in a message I copied and pasted to several people through text, on Gchat, and in Facebook Messenger, six weeks ago. The question was a followup to a revelation I also shared with the same people: I’d recently discovered, while finally seriously researching potential therapists—after telling myself for years that…
-
'Quiet Storm': A 2-Week Series About Mental Health on VSB
Like many folks who haven’t seen the hit stage play Hamilton in person, I relished the opportunity to watch it on Disney+ when it released on July 3, 2020. Even if you don’t care for musicals—or the subject matter of this particular musical—it’s impressive in its expanse and each of the stars of the show…
-
‘Mind the Gap’: A 20-Year-Old Black Medical Student Is Writing a Guide Illustrating How Common Medical Symptoms Appear on Dark Skin
A Zimbabwe-born medical student living in London is filling in an important blind spot in the medical community: informing healthcare providers and patients how symptoms for a broad range of conditions appear on darker skin. It’s the kind of problem that feels shockingly outdated for the 21st century, but as 20-year-old St. George student Malone…
-
Biz Markie Has Been Hospitalized for Weeks Due to Diabetes Complications
Legendary rapper, beatboxer and DJ Biz Markie has reportedly been in the hospital for weeks being treated for an illness triggered by complications of Type 2 diabetes. Per TMZ, a rep for the musician says that he is in a Maryland-area hospital, and the status of his condition is unclear. “He is receiving the best…
-
Post-Traumatic Blackness Disorder: The Mental Toll of Surviving Racism
We called it “The Bull in the Ring.” Every gridiron competitor in America has likely played a variation of this ubiquitous football drill. It begins with one player in the center of a circle of other teammates, who take turns hitting the player in the middle of the “ring” in an attempt to push them…
-
The Worst Day of My Life and the 20 Years of Trauma That Followed
Twenty years ago, my life changed forever. When I woke up on July 16, 2000, I never could have predicted how different my life would be by midnight. But it was. And I was. And still am, if I’m being honest. As I was scrolling my social media feeds this morning, I noticed that my…
-
The Cakewalk: Cops, My Mental Condition and the Tradition of Police Brutality
It started with a piece of strawberry cake. During my years after high school, some of my good friends, who would later become family, opened a Caribbean restaurant on H Street N.E. in D.C. It was really a takeout place with a few places to sit, but for many of us, it was a second…
-
How 'Spoon Theory' Can Help You Monitor and Manage Your Mental Wellbeing During Turbulent Times
The news about the state of the nation’s mental health was alarming even before the traumatic events of this past week—when news cycles and social media timelines were flooded with news about racists, deadly, and un-redressed assaults on black people. On Tuesday (which, somehow, wasn’t three years ago) a Census Bureau report showed a third…
-
3 Tips You Can Try Right Now to Improve Your Mental Health
Quarantine life is a lot, y’all. Not only have lives been lost, but millions of jobs have evaporated as we’ve struggled to regain some sense of normalcy as a society. It also doesn’t help that with stay-at-home orders in place, many of us have suffered through this experience in solitude. Thankfully, author Justin Michael Williams—go…
-
To Navigate Your Mental Wellbeing, You Need to Use Your Body
During a pandemic, your body is the biggest thing there is. I live in New York, a city where, under pre-pandemic circumstances, you can feel everything and nothing at once. But since the first coronavirus case was confirmed here, my life, like the lives of many others, has been contained, no longer ping-ponging from one…