Health
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What Lies Beneath: Hypnotherapy Is Helping Me Get to the Bottom of My Depression
I’m afraid I’m going to fart in front of my therapist. Specifically, I’m afraid I’m going to fall asleep during therapy, and fart in my sleep (and don’t act like you never fart in your sleep, because you do). For all I know, I already have at some point during the past 10 months I’ve…
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Milwaukee County Declares Racism a Public Health Crisis. Will More Cities Follow Suit?
In what’s being touted as an important first step in addressing decades of race-based inequality, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele signed a resolution Monday declaring racism a public health crisis. “Everybody has been reading and hearing about the same set of statistics in Milwaukee for decades,” Abele said at yesterday’s signing, according to the Milwaukee…
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Get Your Mind Right: A Guide to ‘New Age’ Therapies for Mental Wellness
There are a million ways for a girl to get her mind right. Some nights she might permit her waist to recklessly abandon it all on a dance floor. Some days it requires a flight to blue skies and even bluer waters (funds permitting). Many times, though, it happens in someone’s chair. A therapist’s. A…
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When Mental Illness Is Your Family Heirloom
You know that scene in My Cousin Vinny where Vinny’s girlfriend, Mona Lisa Vito, played by Marissa Tomei, testifies in court as an “expert witness” on cars? When opposing counsel condescendingly asks how a sweet little lady like herself—a hairdresser, even—could be an authority on automobiles, she replies, “My father was a mechanic. His father…
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Being Bipolar Means Always Having to Say, ‘Um…What’s Your Name Again?’
Charlie Sheen, who at one time was definitely a terrible person who also happens to struggle with mental illness and addiction, once said (and I paraphrase) that most people wouldn’t last very long in his head. While during the very manic time when he said these “tiger blood”-related things, Sheen was, again, a chaotic, awful…
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Taraji P. Henson Announces Two-Day 'Can We Talk?' Mental Health Summit
Actress Taraji P. Henson announced that her Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation (BLHF) will hold a two-day summit “to exchange ideas around normalizing the conversation of mental illness in the African-American community.” The first “Can We Talk?” Conference and Benefit Dinner will take place in Washington, D.C., on June 7-9, People reports. The Empire star, who…
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Common Opens Up About Being Molested as a Child and the 'Deep and Sudden Shame' He Felt
Shame thrives in silence. With every word spoken, every narrative reclaimed, sexual abuse victims and survivors have found a renewed power. In his new memoir, Let Love Have the Last Word, Common spoke about a topic that is often buried in silence amongst black men in the community — experiencing sexual assault. Trigger Warning: Please…
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Yoga Is My Self-Care: More Black Men Need to Breathe
As soon as I walk into my yoga studio in Brooklyn, I leave every societal hang-up on how black men are supposed to act and feel at the door. I can be free. I can be me, at peace with my mind and body. I exist unjudged by the people practicing with me because they,…
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The Semicolon: How a Seemingly Obscure Tattoo Signifies Survival and Solidarity
In 2013, 27-year-old Amy Bleuel began a mental health advocacy organization dubbed “Project Semicolon” to bring awareness to suicide, depression, addiction and self-injury. Bleuel, who had lost her father to suicide 10 years earlier, died by suicide at the age of 31. The campaign, however, remains strong, inspiring others to take an active role in…
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In the Sunshine: The Root Tackles Mental Health in May
Today, May 1, marks May Day, the day that we pay homage to the workers of the world, and it also marks the start of Mental Health Awareness Month. Here at The Root, we take Mental Health seriously, and we aim to give our readership not only stories they can relate to, but which give…