I decided to take a look at race and racism’s effects on mental health because as the title says, black mental health matters (and this goes for all skin tones, of course). But what I realized is that I’m not the best person for this. Just as I believe the voices of people with bipolar disorder need to be in discussions about bipolar disorder, I believe people of color need to be in discussions about race and racism’s effect on mental health.

Luckily for me, I happen to know Mike Veny — an African American, a preeminent mental health speaker and author of Transforming Stigma: How to Become a Mental Wellness Superhero. You might remember Mike from his well-received guest post here, “Improving Men’s Mental Health Before It Becomes a Crisis.” And while no one can speak for an entire group, so many of Mike’s words ring true and clear.

Mike and I sat down this morning to talk about race and mental health and how uncomfortable conversations about race and mental health are the ones we desperately need to have.

Race and Racism’s Effects on Mental Health — Black Mental Health Matters — A Conversation

Watch our conversation here (a transcript of this conversation follows the video):

I hope you found this conversation enlightening — I did.

Transcript to Race, Racism and Mental Health — A Conversation Between Mike Veny and Natasha Tracy

Natasha Tracy (00:03):

Hi, thank you so much for watching. My name is Natasha Tracy. And today we’re going to be having a frank discussion about race, racism, and mental health. It’s going to be uncomfortable for me, and I don’t know if it’s going to be uncomfortable for you, but I hope that even if it is, you will watch because this is a very important conversation that we need to have. So, I am a writer, I’m a mental health advocate and I am an expert on bipolar disorder. I’ve been in the mental health field for more than a decade. I also live with bipolar disorder myself. Now, I, along with countless, others are feeling something that goes far beyond distressed over the racial tensions that are happening right now in the United States. It is beyond comprehension to me that yet another black man has been murdered at the hands of another white police officer in front of witnesses and on tape. The images of that death are going to stay with me forever and the protests that are going on right now, which are completely understandable, the images of those people and what is going on right now is going to last with me forever. So I wanted to take a minute and I wanted to address race, racism and their effects on mental health.

Natasha Tracy (01:23):

I wanted to write on the subject, but it occurred to me that there was a better way to do this. It would be much better heard from the mouth of someone who has actually experienced this. And that brings me to my guest, Mike Veny. So Mike is a leading mental health speaker and an advocate from New York city. He is also the author of the book, “Transforming Stigma: How to Become a Mental Wellness Superhero,” which I love the title of by the way. He also has lived with depression, anxiety, and OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder). And he does have experience with rage issues as well. Now we are going to get to Mike in just one moment, but I actually want to frame this conversation for a second, with some information that I got from the American Psychiatric Association, for people who might not be familiar with some of the issues that minorities are facing.

Natasha Tracy (02:19):

So compared to Whites, African Americans are less likely to receive guideline-consistent care. They are less likely to be included in research. They are less likely to actually use mental health specialists. Instead, they tend to use their primary care physician and ERs, which tends to degrade their quality of care. Compared with the general population, African Americans are less likely to be offered either evidence-based medication therapy or psychotherapy, and compared with whites with the same symptoms, African Americans are more frequently diagnosed with schizophrenia than they are with a mood disorder. And of course, any kind of misdiagnosis is also going to lead to mistreatment, which is a huge problem for people. And physician patient communication tends to differ with African Americans as well. One study found that physicians are 23% more verbally dominant, and they are engaged 33% less with patient-centered communication with African Americans as opposed to whites. So those are just a few of the small things that, people of color are facing when it comes to mental health and mental illness. So that’s basically where I want to start. Can you tell me, Mike, what are some of the barriers that people are facing?

Mike Veny (03:37):

I mean, there’s so many places to start here and I just want to say this when I’m speaking today, I’m not speaking for all people of color or Black people. I’m speaking from my experience and also conversations I’ve had with others and knowing family and friends who have had different struggles. One of the barriers is the economic side of things. People of color as a group are just more economically disadvantaged and we can go back and forth with the whole reasons and all that. But the reality is it exists and less economic advantage is less access to better treatment and other things in life. So I think that’s really important. The other thing that I want to bring up that I believe is a huge barrier is that people of color are a culture of honor. And I want to explain what that means.

Mike Veny (04:24):

So let’s just say I am walking down the street with another black person. We’re just on a nice sunny day talking and a white person passes us in a car and screams a racial slur. Even if I don’t react to it, at some level, it’s going to be boiling in my blood because I was disrespected. And so we have this in our culture, it’s pretty much in our DNA. And so with that, we don’t want to be disrespected. We don’t want to be weak to each other. We want to show ourselves as strong, which ultimately is a thing for survival and you know, no harm in that. Right. And because of that, we don’t want to display or admit that we struggle with mental health challenges sometimes because we feel that it shows weakness and it’s something that’s just so pervasive in our culture and it’s made it such a hush hush topic that people aren’t getting, the help that they need. So you factor that with some of the statistical information that you just said, plus the culture of honor. And you’ve got a recipe for real mental health problems unique to the Black community and people of color.

Natasha Tracy (05:31):

And I should have asked off the top. So I apologize. Do you prefer to use the term people of color or Black or African American? Because I just don’t know.

Mike Veny (05:40):

You know, that’s a great question. I don’t know either, actually. Um, and the reason I say that is when I was younger, I remember being told I was Black. Then at some point I became African-American and then I was told again I was Black. So I’m confused. So Black is, is fine, because it’s simpler. But if you want to say a person of color, African American, it’s fine by me. However, I know that different people feel strongly about how they’re referred to. So I think it’s an okay thing to ask someone, you know, how do you like to be referred no different than we are doing in the LGBTQ community with asking people what their preferred pronoun is. It’s a very honest question. I think that’s, you know, all about understanding the person and being able to communicate in their language to them in a way that’s comfortable for them.

Natasha Tracy (06:29):

And that actually is also noted in the literature, which is that, there’s a communication divide between Blacks and healthcare providers, right? So, someone of color goes to healthcare provider and it’s like, they’re speaking two different languages. And I think part of this is because a healthcare provider is scared to say, “What do you mean?” Or, “How can I help you?” Or “What would you like me to call you?” Those questions are not questions that healthcare providers are used to asking. I think they’re used to coming in and displaying their knowledge and leaving, but what you need when there’s some kind of barrier, I think, is more communication and that’s what there’s no time for and what they’re not used to doing.

Mike Veny (07:14):

Yes, absolutely. Actually, I’m going to break this down like this: this all starts with trust. It all boils down to trust. And the other thing I want to bring up totally random and unexpected, but I think you’ll get me here, Seth Godin. Who’s a great marketer out there. And one of the things that he says in one, one of his last books, this is marketing is people like us do things like this. It’s something that, you know, we think about you and I are mental health advocates. We think people like us do things like this. You and I have conversations where we bond over certain things we have in common. And so a lot of times when it comes to mental health professionals or just white people in general, African Americans, people of color have a mistrust walking into the situation.

Mike Veny (07:54):

So already we’re going in with fear. We’re going in with, you know, mistrust, anger, skepticism over what’s going to happen. And this starts at a very young age. And I want to give you an example of what this is like for many of us. At a young age, my parents had to talk with me about racism. They said that people are going to be out there who want to hurt you or do bad things to you. And I didn’t understand that that didn’t make sense when against what I was being taught in school. Cause it’s like, all right, we’re supposed to love each other and be nice to people. You know, the things we learned as kids. So it never really made sense to me. And then when it happened, a few situations in my life happened, I understood it.

Mike Veny (08:37):

And it really wreaks havoc on our self esteem when a racial incident happens. Because for instance, let’s just take me for instance, I was driving the other day and I’m okay. I got a car during the pandemic it’s my pandemic purchase. I got me a little smart car. It looks like a little go-cart and I’m having fun driving my go-cart around town. But you know what? I passed a police officer. This is before the whole George Floyd thing. And I got nervous. I felt anxious because I know about the statistics of what happens with black people and police officers. So anytime I get pulled over, anytime I pass a police officer, I get very self conscious about how I’m coming off so I’m not perceived as a threat. And I don’t even think about it. Like you talked with me about this the other day and I didn’t realize how much I think about this. Another one is going out in my neighborhood at night. I have a wonderful neighborhood. There’s no violence here, polite neighbors. It’s a predominantly White community I’d say, but I walk out on the streets and sometimes if a woman is walking in front of me, I’ve noticed that I do this. I walked to the other side of the street because I don’t want to scare her, because I might come off as intimidating. And I realized that it’s not accusing her of anything or saying that she’s a bad person or going to be a racist, but I understand that these things happen. And so you take my experience and multiply it in the Black community, going into a healthcare provider. There’s a lot of distrust that you don’t get me, that you’re going to lie to me, that you’re just going to want to circle off anything you can to get paid and you don’t care about us. And that’s the kind of mentality that people are going in there with. Rightfully so.

Natasha Tracy (10:22):

Yeah. Rightfully so. I mentioned earlier that, African Americans get diagnosed with schizophrenia more frequently. This is historically something that has happened to African Americans that even when they had no mental illness, they would be diagnosed with schizophrenia because they would do things that people deemed socially unacceptable. So they were diagnosed with schizophrenia. And so as a community, I can only empathize and try to consider what that might do, which is, of course, make you distrust the people who would do that. I mean, who would diagnose someone with a serious mental illness because of behavior that someone didn’t like?

Mike Veny (11:07):

And, and if you think about that, take that exact scenario happens all the time in the black community. One of the reasons there’s lack of trust around even talking about your issues is because we’re going to get misdiagnosed anyway. So why even bring it up? You know? And so a lot of times we start creating our own terms for things in the community that happened with each other. And we don’t address it seriously. Like one instance, I was talking about with someone, another advocate, is a lot of times in black communities, you have a, I’m just going to say in a neighborhood, a guy named Sparkles. Everybody knows Sparkles. Sparkles is always like drunk and, you know, speaking loudly and being silly and stuff, and clearly Sparkles is struggling with some kind of mental health challenge on some level, but in the Black [community], that’s almost glorified and made fun of sometimes. And you know, we just say, “Oh, it’s a part of life.” But the reality is Sparkles really has a problem. So it’s really important to get someone like that help. And we just don’t do that. There’s this mistrust people like us do things like this and the majority is out to get us. We don’t trust them. So again, I’m giving a very narrow-minded perspective on it. It goes much deeper, but that’s the idea is that there’s a mistrust.

Natasha Tracy (12:21):

And like you said, it’s completely understandable mistrust too, right? It’s not misplaced mistrust. It’s actual mistrust that is based on real life experiences and real histories and real people. I think it’s really important to recognize that it’s not just something in their heads if you will, but it’s a real thing that that comes from a place that is true. And we need to respect that and understand that is what people are going in with. And if anything, it’s our job to try and disprove that if we can. As a person who works in mental health, obviously I never ever want someone to think that I would treat them differently because of their race. But it’s up to me to make that clear as opposed to up to the other person, to see it in me. It’s up to me to make that clear.

Mike Veny (13:22):

Absolutely. And that can be said beyond race, you know, we can take this to other things, gender and all these other things. But you know, one thing that I recommend that people say, people are asking me, “What, what do I say to people now?” You know, or “What, what do I not say?” And here’s the thing when it comes to social media right now, everyone is angry and scared from all different sides, for all different reasons. And you and I both know that when you’re angry and scared, rationale goes out the window, rationale is out the window and it’s not in any way diminishing or devaluing anyone’s feelings. The reality is that’s what happens when you get emotional. But when people calm down and we will, at some point, I think a great thing to say to someone is “Just help me understand your perspective.”

Mike Veny (14:11):

You know, I could sit with you in a coffee shop. I’d love to do that at some point when we get to travel again, and sit with you and talk to you about you, and [you could tell me] about your perspective being a woman. You could just tell me about that. I want to hear about it. I am never going to understand fully, I’m sorry. I can try to listen and pay attention, but I’m never going to fully understand, but I can try. And I think it’s that effort right there of being willing to say, “Help me understand,” that makes people start to feel heard because right now, one of the reasons we’re seeing all these riots is people have not felt heard at all and they’re responding. I don’t agree with violence, by the way. I just want to put that out there. I don’t condone it, but in terms of a peaceful protest, absolutely, do as many as you can. But that’s an important thing is feeling heard. But one thing I just also want to go back to is when you’ve got anger and fear and self-esteem issues, and just trauma from dealing with hearing about racial stuff, everyone in the Black community knows someone who’s been killed due to racism.

Natasha Tracy (15:13):

That’s a horrific thing. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That’s a horrific thing.

Mike Veny (15:19):

In my mind, I’m thinking, well, this is kind of normal. It’s like how it goes, you know? And, and it’s funny yesterday, I had, therapy with my therapist and I think she needed therapy that day. I could tell she was, she was struggling and rightfully so. And she asked me, she said, “You seem really calm.” And I said, “Yeah, I meditated.” And she said, “Okay, let’s talk about this.” And I said, I might be burying feelings, but I also said to her, I’m not surprised, not surprised by what’s happened with George Floyd because I’m used to seeing this in the world and what might be shocking to the world right now is actually kind of normal for some of us to just know about this stuff. So I think it’s really great that we’re talking about it.

Natasha Tracy (16:04):

I think it’s really important to talk as well, as you said, people need to feel heard. And I actually see this in the mental health community for everyone, no matter what your mental health challenges, people typically don’t feel heard. People with depression, people with bipolar, people with whatever they typically don’t feel heard. And then that is what they need to start healing is to feel heard. So it would make sense to me if this community would need that to start some form of healing. And I don’t mean to simplify it because I know it’s really complicated, but that could at least be a piece of what is expected of the rest of us, which is to listen and hear. And not just listen, but to listen openly and to really listen from the depth of ourselves, as opposed to just listening to the words,

Mike Veny (16:58):

Oh, I love that. Love that. Well, you know, what you’re talking about is being empathetic. And a lot of times I have people who say, Hey, I want to listen. And then they interrupt me and say, “But you know, Mike, I don’t see color,” or, “You know, you’ve got it so good,” or things like that. We’re not looking to hear that someone doesn’t see color or someone’s not a racist. We’re just looking to feel heard just like in mental health. And if you think about it, that’s what happens in treatment, right? When you have a really good therapist that just really gets to know you, for you. Oh my God. That’s like 50% of the battle right there. Right? And it puts you in a better place. So I think, even you having this conversation right with me right now, and thank you so much for doing this is an example of what needs to happen across the board.

Natasha Tracy (17:46):

So I generally have avoided racial topics in my writing, in my social media, because they’re so incendiary, right? Anything you say is wrong to somebody, anything. And so I generally try to avoid those topics. You know, someone will say, “Oh, you’re too empathetic,” or “You’re not empathetic enough,” or “You’re saying it wrong,” or whatever. And so I’ve avoided it because I wanted to avoid that flack that I know that I will get by talking about it. But what I read recently on social media, because of all of these protests that have been going on, someone said, it’s not enough to be non-racist. You have to actually be an anti-racist, which means you have to actually speak up against racism and not just not be a racist yourself. That’s not enough anymore. You know, I’ve never in my life, as far as I know, done a racist thing, but that person had a point, which is that it isn’t enough to do that anymore. It’s actually important to say, “I don’t accept racism in others either.” Right? I don’t accept it in myself and I don’t accept it in others. And I’m prepared to stand up and say that because it’s a really important thing to say right now that people know that those of us who maybe have been quiet, we need to not be quiet anymore.

Mike Veny (19:17):

Oh, I absolutely agree with that. Actually last night a lot of companies I work with have been reaching out about just thoughts on messaging around this. And I’m thinking, I don’t know, this is not my thing, you know, messaging, but one thing that I’ve said, and this goes with what you’re saying, and for any company that’s watching right now, if you want to share this with your company, when a company, it makes it public, their policy against racism or any other kind of discrimination, it simply shows who they are. You know, no one is perfect, but if we make a commitment to just be better, that’s really the most important thing. When it comes to bias and racism, I bring this up all the time. Actually, you’ll love this, in Chicago, an area where there’s a lot of violence, there are certain communities that are predominantly Black. I was telling someone, my first trip to Chicago was speaking at a conference and I’d never been in Chicago. It’s like, oh, I’m here. Let me go out. And I decided to go out for a walk because I just like to run the streets by myself. And I went out of my hotel and I’m going to be straight up honest here. I saw the neighborhood and I was like, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I shouldn’t be by myself right now. It was predominantly Black, but clearly a lower income neighborhood. And it was scary. It was scary for me personally, as a Black person, I can say that, but had my White friend told me that, would I consider them a racist? That’s where we need to have more conversations. I don’t think there’s a right answer to that, by the way, I think it’s important conversation to have.

Mike Veny (20:52):

And it’s important to have these uncomfortable conversations. One thing that I’ve been doing this week, I have a company and I have several people working for me that are White. And I’ve reached out to everyone that I worked with this week. I’m checking on everyone’s emotional state because everyone’s experiencing it differently and giving people the space to say, what is on your mind, and do it unfiltered. And I will listen. I’m not looking to give them answers on how to message things or what to say. I think during this time what’s really important is that if you have a friend who’s a person of color or family member, just listen, you know, just listen to understand. You’re not there to defend yourself as a good person. You’re there to just be a good person.

Natasha Tracy (21:37):

Yeah. Because one of the other things that I read recently is that it’s not a Black person’s responsibility to educate White people on the struggle of Black people. Okay. So that was a point that someone wanted to make. And while I respect that point, I really think that it closed down communication, because I actually was scared to talk to you because I didn’t want you to think that I was trying to take from you. This is not a good time to be taking from people. I didn’t want you to feel like that. And so that was something that was hard for me, just personally.

Mike Veny (22:16):

Can I just tell you how it came off to me? First of all, I was flattered that you reached out to me about this. I said, Oh my God, I’d love to help you. I said that to you about several things. I love you and I love your work. And also part of me inside felt a little sad that you we’re feeling self-conscious and, and had to fear approaching this topic. And that’s part of the problem right there too. So it’s not just a one-sided thing. I think when it comes to these conversations, just like mental health, they’re complex. And let me put it to you like this: humans don’t like things that are complex. We like to put things in a box. And, certain things like mental health, spirituality, race, they’re kind of just gray area. And the better we learn to sit in that gray area, the better we’ll learn about ourselves and the better we’ll bond with each other.

Natasha Tracy (23:09):

I do agree with you on that. I’s hard to sit in a gray area, it’s really challenging. It is much easier to say good, bad, right wrong, black, white, that’s way easier. So this is difficult, but so important. And I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. Because like I said, you didn’t have to, you could have said, “Look, this is not my problem.” And I would have understood if he did.

Mike Veny (23:37):

Absolutely. And just a few other things I just wanted to bring up here too, is that, when it comes to racism, forget just mental health. There’s also studies that show the inflammatory response to the stress, to the fear, produces other chronic health conditions for people of color. So, you know, you might just look at this as a simple, like, okay, it’s just, okay. I got to show them that I like them. No, it goes so much deeper than that. And it’s been going on for so many generations that it’s pretty much what we call intergenerational trauma. It’s in our DNA, it’s in our blood, it’s in our karma. However you want to look at that. So the reality is, even if you don’t get it, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. And that’s something I tell people all the time when it comes to mental health, how many times do you hear someone say, “Well, everybody has mental health issues.”

Mike Veny (24:27):

And it’s like, yeah, but no. And the thing that I remind people who love someone, who’s got a severe mental illness, is that you don’t have to get it. You don’t have to be able to see it to get it, but you can do your best to try to understand and say, “I don’t totally fully get it, but that’s okay. I’m going to still try to see through your eyes.” Um, one other thing too, with that is when it comes to mental health for black people, there’s been a lot of new websites and apps now that are coming out targeted for people of color. Because again, Seth Goden, people like us do things like this. We want to feel that someone gets us one. My friend, Ashley Bryant, has a website called therapy in color.org, where you can find a therapist who is a person of color if you’re more comfortable with that. So I think it’s an important conversation to have, and I encourage everyone on all sides of the aisle to do it with empathy and compassion.

Natasha Tracy (25:23):

I think that’s an amazing service to have, first of all. And we will include a link to that website in the description for this video so that you can find it easily. But while I have you, and just while I’m wrapping up here, do you have any other resources that you think would work either for people of color or for people who just want to learn about this situation and try to be better allies of people of color and be better allies in the mental health sphere?

Mike Veny (25:50):

You know, in my book, “Transforming Stigma,” I bring this up, what to say to a person who’s struggling during this time and when it comes to mental health and race, there’s actually a similarity here in, in both issues. And people feel a power struggle happening. People feel unheard, people feel judged, all these things really important to say things like help me understand asking also how can I support you? Because every Black person is different. Like we’re all not going to respond the same way to messaging. So you could have called another mental health advocate who was Black and, I don’t know, they might’ve screamed at you or something. I hope that didn’t happen, but, he reality is, is everyone’s at a different space with it. And when we do that, we can treat each person as unique and understand their unique needs.

Mike Veny (26:41):

And again, in the process, you’ll a deeper connection with other people. So I encourage people from every side and I want to be even more honest and say, this one thing that I’m saying to people who come to me now about this, like, like yourself, I’ve been responding with. Okay. Now, can you tell me about your experience as a white person too? Because it’s not just looking at it through one lens. It doesn’t make one side right or wrong. It’s about sitting in each other’s shoes basically and seeing the world.

Natasha Tracy (27:11):

That is very beautiful. Thank you so much for ending on that note. I want to see through other people’s eyes and I want to see the world the way other people experience it too. I want to get better at it and I want to do more of it. So, I hope you’ll agree to continue this conversation with me at a later date, but for now, I do want to say goodbye and thank you so much for doing this.

Mike Veny (27:35):

Thank you, Natasha. I appreciate you.