BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month 2021

We’ve partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI) Yolo County, our current Round Up recipient, to bring members of our community resources for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Mental Health Awareness Month. If you belong to the BIPOC/QTBIPOC community, you can find free mental health resources near the end of this blog.

Since 2008, July has been recognized as Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month (or BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month). Bebe Moore Campbell was a Black American author, journalist, teacher, and mental health advocate. She worked tirelessly to bring attention to the mental health needs of the Black community, including those of her daughter who suffered from mental illness. She witnessed the abandonment of her daughter by institutions meant to help, so she founded NAMI Inglewood to create space for Black folks to talk about mental health concerns.

This year’s theme is Strength in Communities. Like Bebe Moore Campbell and her daughter, many BIPOC folks have to find mental health support outside of traditional institutions. A lack of adequate services and a lack of representation have effectively marginalized many BIPOC folks from these traditional avenues of support. This year’s theme recognizes how BIPOC communities have had to overcome this and in the process have become experts in creating alternative support systems built by BIPOC and QTBIPOC (queer and transgender BIPOC) for BIPOC and QTBIPOC. Some of these alternative support systems include:

Community care refers to ways in which communities of color have provided support to each other. This can include things such as mutual aid, peer support, and healing circles.
Self-directed care is an innovative practice that emphasizes that people with mental health and substance use conditions, or their representatives if applicable, have decision-making authority over services they receive.
Cultural care refers to practices that are embedded in cultures that are passed down through generations that naturally provide resiliency and healing.

Not surprisingly, white supremacy has serious negative effects on BIPOC mental health. Racial trauma refers to “ongoing individual and collective harms from repeated exposure to race-based stress.” The mental health effects of racial trauma are similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. However, race-based traumatic stress involves prolonged exposure to the stressor(s), unlike traditional cases of PTSD. According to Mental Health America, while rates of mental illness are slightly lower in BIPOC communities, they often experience a higher burden of disability from mental illness. In fact, Black adults are 20% more likely than white adults to report serious psychological distress and depression is more persistent in BIPOC communities. In the criminal justice system, where BIPOC folks are disproportionately overrepresented, mental health conditions are common. The American Psychiatric Association found that 50-75% of BIPOC youth in the juvenile justice system meet the diagnostic criteria for a mental illness. Finally, Indigenous adults in the U.S. have the highest reported rate of mental illness of any single race identifying group, according to the APA.