trauma and mental illness
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Taraji P. Henson Wants Us To Change How We Talk About Mental Health
Can we talk for a minute? And no, I’m not trying to know your name. I want to talk about mental health in the black community. Brothas, how y’all feeling? Sisters, y’all alright? In the black community discussing mental health is a privilege. We have a tendency to not call a thing a thing. We…
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Survivor’s Remorse: On Junot Díaz and the Collateral Damage of Trauma
I began this week in tears. Early Monday morning, hot, torrential tears were flowing as if I were in the midst of my last heartbreak—or the one before that, or the one before that. I was reading Junot Díaz’s searingly confessional essay in the New Yorker about confronting and coping with his childhood rape. Like…
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Stephon Clark’s Younger Brother Admits Mental Distress After Brother’s Death by Police
Stevante Clark, younger brother of Stephon Clark, the young man killed by Sacramento, Calif., police, recently revealed that he has sought mental health help in the wake of his brother’s untimely and unjust death. Not long after Stephon Clark, 22, was shot eight times in his grandmother’s backyard when police mistook his cellphone for a…
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#SaheedVassell Mentally Spiraled After NYPD Gunned Down His Best Friend 10 Years Ago
In a most stinging irony, Saheed Vassell slid into a worsening depression after his best friend, Ortanzso “Marlon” Bovell, was shot and killed by police in 2008. The mental stress of experiencing such personal heartbreak most likely played a role in Vassell’s meeting the same fate—death by cop—on those same Brooklyn, N.Y., streets almost a…