Session 358: Tending to Youth Mental Health

Published May 8, 2024, 7:00 AM

After living through a global pandemic, missing years of in-person interaction, and dealing with the constant onslaught of violence displayed on social media, I think it’s safe to say that our kids are far from alright. 

Joining me today to talk about some of the top concerns youth are facing when it comes to their mental health is fellow psychologist, Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble. A thought leader in her field, Dr. Alfiee focuses on mental health and suicide prevention for intersectional Youth and Young Adults of Color. She is a regular media contributor for outlets like The Grio, Today Show, The Breakfast Club, the New York Times, and others. During our conversation, we discuss the impact of racial trauma on youth mental health, how parents can monitor their child’s activity without invading their privacy, and strategies for cultivating an environment in which a child can express themselves freely.

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The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.

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Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor joy hard and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much for joining me for session three fifty eight of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. We'll get right into our conversation afterword from our sponsors.

Hi.

I'm doctor Alfie. I'm on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. I'm in session today discussing youth mental health concerns.

After living through a global pandemic, missing years of in person interaction, and dealing with the constant onslaught of violence displayed on social media, I think it's safe to say that our kids are far from alright to talk with me today about some of the concerns youth are facing when it comes to their mental health. I'm joined by my colleague and fellow psychologist, doctor Alfie Brelan Noble, A thought leader in her field, Doctor Alfie focuses on mental health and suicide prevention for intersectional youth and young adults of color. She's a regular contributor for outlets like The Grio, Today Show, with The Breakfast Club, The New York Times, and others. Over, we discussed the impact of racial trauma on youth mental health, how parents can monitor their child's activity without invading their privacy, and strategies for cultivating an environment in which a child can express themselves freely. If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please share with us on social media using the hashtag TBG in session, or join us over in the Sister Circle. To talk more about the episode, you can join us at community dot therapy for Blackgirls dot Com. Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today, doctor Elfie.

Thank you for having me my sister. I am so appreciative, my sorrow, I had throw that in there right quick. I am really grateful for.

You, absolutely, Thank you so much for joining us. So I wonder if you could get started by telling us a little bit about your work with the Acoma Project and what really interested you most in youth mental health.

Yeah, so my work really is an outgrowth of my own up bringing. I'm from Virginia Beach, Virginia. I'm from in between where I grew up, and we're all about the same age. I'm a little bit older than these guys, but Chad and Pharrell, otherwise known as the Neptunes, they grew up in one direction about three miles away from me, maybe five. Then in the other direction less than two miles away from me. Timberland grew up the super producer and Missy Elliott's from a couple towns over and from Portsmouth, Virginia. And so that childhood growing up a Virginia Beach, I think was the impetus for a lot of my interest in youth mental health. Because I'm sure a lot of the professionals that you have on your podcast we grew up in environments where my parents are Baby Boomer and Silent generation, right, and so they were doing what they thought was best for us, which was moving us to another area where they thought we could have great opportunities in public schools. I come from a public school family, and so it was rough, right, because I was just sharing with somebody. They said, tell us something that would blow a millennial's mind if they knew this was part of your experience. And I said, we used to have these classes. Now, maybe y'all had track in two. I certainly didn't hear it. With my children. We had superior, average and remedial classes. And guess whose classes all the kids of color were and remedial, right, And so I was one of the kids in the superior was honest class. But just think about the terminology. That's what I grew up in. Like you're telling the kid they were remedia and it's on your report card that you're in like the little r you're in remedial classes. And so it was tough being a smart, I don't know, like relatively self confident with my books. Now we can talk about the other stuff, but being confident with my books and knowing that I was smart, and I had teachers at home, so I knew stuff. And so that was tough growing up in an environment where I felt isolated. And so the youth mental health piece really did come out of my experiences growing up in Virginia Beach and knowing what I experienced in predominantly white spaces being a black girl, a dark chocolate black girl, and I just felt like, if I can be a light for another young person at any point in their life who might be experiencing something similar or anything that interferes with their mental health, I really wanted to try hard to be that light. And that's how I really got interested in it because I know what my experiences were.

So that's quite a special cool heart of peers that you grew up with, right, So clearly there's something going on in that area that also leads to lots of creativity and greatness as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's funny because Farrell's producing a movie that I think Hallie Bailey is going to be a start in, and it talks about his growing up in these apartment I know exactly where the apartments are. They called the Atlanti's Apartments. This is all out in the press release and everything. I was like, I know Atlanti's Apartments. I remember being down there, was in the area closer to the ocean front. And so when he talks about skateboard pee and surfing and I'm like, I know exactly what he's talking about because that was our childhood, you know, growing up in that area. There were so few of us black kids, and so you gravitated to the things your peers did, right, and your peers surf, our peers skateboarded, So that's what we So there had to be something special down there, Like these parents, these black parents down there and these Filipino parents were like pushing something into these kids to make us think we could do great things. And you've got these folks who are out there doing great things. So I'm not in their stratosphere, but I give them all the respect they deserve.

Here in a sphere of your own. That's okay, So talk with me, doctor LFA, about why it's important for us to also focus on youth mental health as a part of our larger conversations about mental health in general.

Yeah, I think about I was sharing with you earlier. I love the fact that we have the same degree. And part of what I learned and part of what I gravitate to with having that particular psych background is this focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion before it was popular, right, So we had the multicultural Handbook of Counseling, way back in the day before anybody was checking for that. The Super Brothers, right, So we know those guys are icons in our field, Like you know, there's so many in our field, doctor James, White people like that. And so when I think about those folks, I think about the fact that they really created a space back then, like late eighties, early nineties, early two thousands, for us to be able to have conversations about having a big tint that everybody could fit in. So whether a person had a disability, whether a person was LGBTQAI plus counselor psyche was talking about that like decades ago. And so it's just the idea that for our young people, just like with anybody I think about, like therapy for black girls, I actually think about girls, the girls who grow up to become women. I think about the trans girls. I think about the non gender conforming young people who may lean feminine sometimes right, And so when I think about all those young people, I think our field rit laars the whole all of psych all of psychiatry, all of social work. Although they've done better than we have in nursing, nurse practition, psychiatric nurse practitioners and those folks. I feel like we as a field have not done a good job of amplifying and centering the unique mental health needs of diverse young people, right because when we build interventions, we build them and we have this category called non white, which I cannot tell you how much I hate that term, because that's not how we identify ourselves. And so for me, it is why would we not focus on youth mental health? Because our young people, they don't get those issues addressed as young people, They're going to grow into adulthood carrying those issues which you know well and talk about all the time. So so much of our experience as adults is rooted in what were our experiences as children, And so why wouldn't we start the conversation with our young people. Why would we not want to support young adults who graduated high school and maybe in the military, out working or starting families, or in college. All of those young people have needs, and those are periods of heavy transition, like you're going from elementary to middle middle, the high hi to college or the work or the military.

You're getting married and.

So finding yourself and trying to figure all that stuff out. And not having mental health support is too much. So I figure we can do a little something to support our young people and make sure that their mental health needs are met. And that's why we do the work that we do at a COMA.

So I know I don't have to tell you, but I will share for the benefit of our audience these staggering stats that are coming out from lots of organizations, but the Pew Research in specific talked about from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty one, we saw suicide rates among black youth grow at a faster rate than any other racial group. And so can you talk a little bit about what factors really contribute to the heightened struggles that we're seeing and that are leading to some of these increased suicide rates.

Absolutely, so two things.

I had the great pleasure of being part of a group with the Congressional Black Caucus led by Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman Wring the alarm. The Congress and the federal people were task force. We were the working group. So the working group was comprised of twenty twenty five Black scholars, all different kinds of disciplines whose interest was in these increases in black youth suicide rates, and we put out this Ring the Alarm Report with Representative Watson Coleman. And one thing that we don't talk about in general, again going back to how we do research around youth and young adult mental health, one thing we don't talk about enough is racial trauma and the unique experiences of young people of color around these issues of racial trauma. So when you look at the research that we've done at a COMA, we put out something called the State of Mental Health of Youth of Color. The Big Full Report was put out in twenty twenty three, and what we find is that about eighteen percent of all young people of color from our survey, which should reflect the larger population of young people, report exposure to racial trauma in the prior year. Now, eighteen percent doesn't sound like a lot, but in my mind, nobody's asking the questions. So if we were to ask the question more frequently, who knows, the numbers might be higher. But it's the idea that we decided to ask the question, and that's not typically a question that's asked. So we often talk about the usual suspects, intergenerational trauma, right exposure to other kinds of trauma. We talk about young people just in general, with worries about climate change, finance, COVID. There's so many things that our young people are faced with that are slightly different from maybe what older millennials and Gen xers and older experience, and so I think it's just the perfect storm of challenges. And let's not forget I think social media can be a force for good, but one of the challenges with social media is they're constantly bombarded with information. So whether that's world affairs, all these wars and conflicts going on, or more day to day stuff like comparing yourself to your peers. Oh so and so got a new car ford their birthday. I don't have a new you know what I mean? Or so also got the latest essential sweatpants. I don't have essential swept I just got regular sweatpants. So it's all these challenges that they have that I feel like it's important for us, is the caregivers in their lives to give them tools to help them manage and cope.

You know, it always is such a struggle to me, doctor Elphie, and I know we are both parents. I feel like it is such a heartbreaking experience and we talked about this on the podcast before, about like how to prep your young people of color for this world that they are entering.

Right.

So, when you talk about like racial trauma and all the protests that we are seeing happen even in real time right now, right what kinds of conversation should we be having with the young people in our lives. What suggestions would you give to parents and caregivers about how to open up and give them some strategies.

I think the first thing is exactly what you do here. It is helping people understand how to look at these things for themselves. There are too many of us again gen X and older, much less so for millennials younger, but there are too many of us who grew up as parents of color, Black parents in particular, and caregivers where we never had conversations about mental health. That's not something you talk about you either, right from the South, You pray it away, right, go to doctor Jesus. There's nothing wrong with that. But you also have to have things day to day, moment to moment to help you. And so what I say to parents and caregivers is you have to be modeling for your young people that you take care of your own mental health, that you are concerned about your own mental health. And I think if we don't start there, you got young people. They can sniff out in authenticity a mile away, right, So if.

You say you should do they're like, but you don't do it.

You come in here yelling and screaming, and you stressed all the time with why I got to do it?

So I think it's being.

Clear with ourselves, which is not a quick fix, but I think we can start there.

Then.

I think in terms of having a conversation with young people, it's really critical that we maybe write out a script.

Right.

You got to think about what are the messages that you want to communicate. And I think more important than anything, I heard somebody say this yesterday, you have two ears and one mouth governing yourself accordingly. Actually it was my husband's pastor, And what I took from that is it's important to be willing to listen to what.

Our young people are dealing with.

And then as we're listening, your listeners know all this terminology, but for other folks who might be new to it, it's important to do active listening, right, so you'd be nigh in your head, your mouth is closed, you're looking at the young person, you're not looking at your phone or looking away. And then the other thing I think that's really important is to listen with the intention of love and care, not with the intention to fix, because if you go in trying to fix everything for them, sometimes our young people will shut down because they're not looking for a fix. They're just looking for support and they're looking for somebody to listen. So those are some of the things I say to parents and caregivers.

Thank you so much for that. More from our conversation after the break, but first a quick snippet of what's coming next week on TVG.

One of the key findings though that I saw was the ways that black women often used humor to talk through some of the oppressions that they faced. So it could be racism, it could be sexism, agism, but it was the way that we told the stories to each other. Where we inserted humor, we retold the stories. We were the characters right in all of these stories. That really made me think about the ways that we use humor in telling our stories, and that it's so innate that it just happens right. We're storytellers and we just continue to tell these stories and use humor at every part of the way. Even when we thought we should be crying.

There was a.

Moment where we are literally laughing and crying at.

Some pretty serious things.

But the ways that we were able to handle that was through the humor.

I know. We also know that sometimes even some of the symptoms of anxiety and depression and other things look different in youth, and probably particularly in youth of color, than they do maybe in adults. Can you give us a little bit of insight into what we may be on the lookout for in our young people?

Sure?

So one of the things we did with our survey was we asked young people. We use some of the same standard surveys that are used with what they call the YRBSS. That's an annual survey that they do with teenagers all over the country that's put out by SAMSA and the CDC. So we use those same questions and we add to some of our own. And what we find is when you look at the symptoms that young people report, say, for example, anxiety, young people will say that they have a hard time making decisions right, they have a hard time concentrating, they get fearful, not just having a hard time by making decisions, but worry about making decisions. So it's like meta worry, right, it's like worry inside, the worry inside, the worry for depression. I think sometimes what we're looking at often in young people of color because of different cultural moraising values right, not right or wrong, they're just different. Anger and aggression an assertion is often what you will see in our young people of color who might be experiencing depressive illness instead of sadness. I call it like the e or syndrome. Everybody who's depressed not walking around looking like you're. Some people who are experiencing depressed walking around just looking angry, And I tell parents and caregivers look. Part of why that's effective for young people is it has the same impact. When you withdraw and isolate yourself and shut people out, you're actively trying to get people to leave you alone because you want to be alone with your sorrow and the heaviness.

The same thing happens when you're angry.

Right.

I remember that old er Kabaidu song bag Lady. It's like when people see you coming, they take off running. And so if you're angry and like aggressive and leave me alone and everything gets on your nerves all the time. You have the same net effect. People go away, they don't want to be around you, and it serves your purpose, which is you want to be alone as wallow and the sadness and the sorrow. So I try to tell parents and caregivers and all of us pay attention to day to day sort of mood swings or day to day behaviors, and if it changes for one day, maybe that's not the thing to worry about, because young people go through moods, we all do. But if it persists, you notice if it persists for a week, ten days, two weeks, and you're seeing sort of some of the same stuff, the sadness, the isolation, the disinteresting things that used to love, then maybe it's time to check in or think about going to get some help. But if we don't communicate with our young people, that's one of the things that we found in our research too, is the caregiver young people die. Ass that have open lines of communication are better able to identify and begin to navigate the process because they're communicating right, so you know what's going on with you. But if you don't communicate, you may never know what's going on. So these are the things I try to encourage our caregivers and parents to think about.

But it's a lot, right.

You already got many things you're trying to jug right already, don't eat breakfast, we know that, right, And so it's just really hard to keep up with all of it. But that then becomes that paying attention and just understanding your child on a day when they hear she or they feel neutral. That's how you can begin to calibrate because that's the child's baseline, and you can sort of look for those ups and downs and the intensity of the ups and downs once you understand day to day what is my child like? And too few of us, myself included, pay attention to what's my kid like day to day when they're just kind of neutral.

So I wonder, doctor La, if you can give us a little more insight into how we can establish these open lines of communication. So you already gave us a little bit in terms of like listening more than we talk, But what other kinds of things can we do to cultivate this space with the young people in our lives.

I tell people it's hard to guess, and we always gonna get it wrong, and sometimes we get it wrong by the kid's intention when we try to guess what's cool or what's popular, because the minute I said, oh, I don't like that, it's not cool anymore.

Right.

So, like I'm a big old school hip hop here, and I like a lot of new artists too, But when I start talking about an artist, like my favorite right now is central Cy and Dave, they're from the UK.

Love them. The minute I started talking about Central Ce, my son was like, Mom, you tweaking. That's why. Don't do that normal?

Right?

And so it can be hard to try to figure out, right, And so I think what I encourage caregivers and parents to do is again, pay attention to what they're looking at. So when they're watching TV, you don't have to go sit down with them necessarily. They may not want that, but look at what they're looking at. Are they looking at Dragon ball Z? Are they looking at My favorite used to be The Backyard Agaans. I love The Backyardings God Rest their Sister Soul Janis Burgess. That show was phenomenal. But my daughter used to love Scandal reruns, And so what are their interests, right, Like they go to school, what are they doing at school? Like nowadays everything's like trying so you can't fifty thousand emails today, right, So you can see what kind of things are accessible to your child or what they have available to them at school. One trick that I learned a long time ago is try a reading or book club. One of my kids is loves reading. Can we think of a book that we can read together, and then just have these periodic check ins over the course of like six weeks, just twenty minutes, let's sit down and talk about the book. Or your child's not a reader. Can you take them for ice cream? Just randomly, just go find something to do? Can you take them to the movie? So it's finding activities. They don't all have to cost something, but finding activities that you can do where the focus is not a staring at each other. The focus is we're doing something together and hopefully in the course of doing that shared activity, you find the openings to have a conversation. So it's being creative with the stuff that you already do. Can they help you cook? Are they interested in helping you cook? When you're washing dishes? And that's their chore. Can you go in and say, I'm gonna help you for twenty minutes, let me get this side over here, you get this side, and those then become ways for your young people to get used to you being around, right, because sometimes what we do is, I remember this from high school a million years ago. I come home or go straight up to my room. I come out to eat, I go back to my room. Where's the opportunity to interact? There really isn't any. So it is finding stuff that you already do and either inserting yourself into it with your child or the young person you're caring for, or it's inviting your child into things that you like to do for very brief periods of time because you know their attention spans are not.

Long, right of course, of course, so I need some insight as a parent myself, Doctor Elfie around because you already talked about electronics and how so much of their lives exists on these little screens. What is the fine line? Because I do think it's probably fine around allowing them to have privacy, but also needing to know like what they're watching, who they're talking to, what they're paying attention to, like what is the line there.

One tool I think we have to have is going back to communication. We have to have a way to communicate. So whatever that is for your family, figure that out and stick with it.

Okay.

So the direct answer to your question from my experience to research that we do and having two of my own children, is I like to give them enough freedom that they know and they can see a demonstration that I trust them, I am trusting you. But that freedom has limits. Right, So I was weird. My parents are from Mississippi, and it was very much just do it because I told you to do it right, Just do what I say it.

Do.

And there are a lot of parents who are wearing their children that way. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. So if that's the relationship that you have with your child, and you know your child is gonna listen, you can set those boundaries. This is how much time you're gonna spend on this device per day. Don't touch that device so that homework is done or your chores are done, whatever the case may be. I'm gonna give you latitude with these platforms. Let's figure out which platforms you're gonna use, because you can't have eight of them, you can have two. Let's figure out which two you're gonna have, and then you know again, if communication lines are open, I think you build a kind of relationship where you can say to your child, I'm gonna give you space. If this works for you, I'm gonna give you space. Used to do this without me over your shoulder monitoring. But I don't want no fence to this right. Don't let me find out it's a fake TikTok and the right that you got me following and I find out some of because then I'm gonna take all of it, do you.

Know what I mean?

So it's being really clear. So I'll tell you what we did with ours when we were younger. One is out of high school, one is about to be out of high school. We did a contract the condition of you getting this phone that I'm paying this bill for. Is this contract. One other thing I learned from the Obamas. I watched them on some interview years ago when he was in the White House. She said limited screen time.

That blew my mind.

I had never considered it. So they said that their children had no screen time during the week, and I was like, well, what does that mean? No TV, no devices, no nothing, right, So have a contract that works for your family. And I think it really is trial and error. I don't think that there's any rule for how long it should be, how short it should be. I think it's what works for your family. And I think what you find is when those lines of communication are open and you set those boundaries, not always, but of and you'll have a very compliant child who's okay letting you.

Know what's going on. Right.

But if we don't set those boundaries, it's like a free for all. We either gonna set those boundaries or the world is gonna set those boundaries. And we don't want the world to set those boundaries. So those contracts, lines of communication, and us as caregivers getting clear what is acceptable to me for a daily amount of time I'm willing to allow my child to be on this platform. And there are all kinds of folks out here doing things to try to set national standards, but again for those of us who are parents of color, those conversations often don't include us, and so we have to find the ways that are culturally relevant, culturally appropriate for us to be able to set those boundaries. But setting them is the key we have to set them more.

From our conversation after the break, we've already outlined some of this, But I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about the impact of social media on youth and mental health. So, I know a lot of the organizations like Instagram and TikTok they have these mental health tanks, force and things for looking at youth and how they interact with their platforms. Can you talk a little bit about what kinds of things we need to be paying attention to as it relates to youth and social media.

Sure, so some of the tools that are out there, you've already talked about some of the platforms. Instagram has a monitoring tool where the parent and the child can be connected to each other, and you have like different levels of how you monitor what your child is doing. Right, And so I think there is this idea that a lot of these platforms recognize that it's kind of a wild wild West out there, and we got to try to wrap our arms around it. And I think more importantly, it is imperative for us as parents and caregivers to be the ones monitoring and supervising and supporting our young people and teaching them the right ways to use social media. So from our data, what we know is for our young people they struggle with some of the same things in social media that they struggle without in the world. Not for young people of color, we know from our data not seeing good representation of themselves, not seeing enough representation of themselves.

And so what do they do.

They try to fill in the gaps so I don't see it, I'm going to create it. And if you're creating it without a sense of what needs to be out there, what needs to be shared, and what needs to be private, because you've never had those conversations with your family members. But what they do is put it all out there, right and once it's out there, you can't get it back. And so I think part of our responsibility and part of what the challenge is is helping young people have a clear understanding of the landscape. What exactly is social media? Where does that stuff go? What are your rights? What is privacy? What is confidentiality? And so I think if we don't know, we can't communicate effectively to our young people, and we sort of lead them to their own devices or to their peers who may also not know right, So I know this one young sister, her name is Lars. Lars is like under thirty, and she's been an advocate in this area of supporting young people around their use of social media and how they interact with it for a decade, right, so since she was in high school, just finished in high school. And then our responsibility around privacy, confidentiality and support is to really sort of lay out the rules, to sort of ask how young people get them focused and ask them to like really think about what they're doing and to really understand what they're signing up for when they put all their business out there, and to understand what are the parameters that they really should be operating within, and to recognize things like once you put it out there, it's out there forever. So you might be fifteen now, well when you're thirty five and trying to.

Get that job, it's still going to be out there. And is that what you want?

So I used to have this thing I would tell young people, remember the grandma. We call my grandmother Mama Alice, big Mama, a boi la rue. If you don't want a buela to see it, don't put it on the internet.

Do you know.

I mean, like, just think about it. And I heard somebody say I really love this the other day. She said the five year rule. If it's not going to matter in five years, then maybe it's okay.

But if it is going to.

Matter in five years, then you might want to think about do you want that out there in the world.

So I don't think there's any.

Easy answer, but I think that there is some balance between the latitude that we allow young people what those impacts of social media, just that unfettered exposure might be, and also setting them up for success by giving them tools to help them navigate it when we're out of my cause we can't be around twenty four to seven to help.

Them, right, right, So I think some of this we are still learning in real time. But I'd love to hear your thoughts about how youth were impacted during the pandemic, right So, I think we know some early things right just around what it meant to not be in the classrooms and to the loss of socialization years. Well, what kinds of things are you paying attention to right now? You think our community also should have an eye on about how youth were impacted.

I think for us, I'm just gonna speak to us as black folks. I think that when I think about our community globally, and I think about all the challenges that we faced during the pandemic, I think about what you know, and I know, and all your listeners I'm sure know, and all your experts know as vicarious trauma. And I don't think we can underestimate the significant impact of the vicarious trauma that our young people were exposed to around racial issues during the pandemic. Right, it was like one thing after another. I don't even need to start naming the names. I can think about my social media posts during the pandemic, and I felt like every week I was making another post about how to cope with some traumatic thing that happened to a black person. If I said, curate your news once, I say that a thousand times, Right, you can't sit and consume that all the time. It's painful and it hurts you. And so I don't think we can underestimate that. I think our young people are still very much struggling, particularly our Black young people, very much struggling with what it means to have to navigate all of that, right, to have had to navigate all of that to still be carrying the impacts of it, And so that's a biggie for me. And then I think on top of that, there's this interesting thing. We had a lot more conversations about mental health during the pandemic. It sort of grew little by little, And I was telling somebody this morning, following you and following your work and just watching, right, it was always on the rise, but just watching how it just shut up during the pandemic because so many more people needed what you're offering. Right, we were all struggling, and our kids were struggling. So I think the import of recognizing that stuff doesn't just go away right when we're exposed to trauma, that's lifelong impact. We think about aces, right, you have these early childhood experiences, that's the rest of your life that it impacts you.

So that for me is a biggie.

Was the racial trauma, the social unrest, and then it was you couldn't get away from it because we're all stuck in the house. So for me, that's a biggie that I don't think we talk anywhere near enough about. On top of everything that you said, the loss of the ability to hit those developmental markers learning how to socialize, the loss of the educational gains that they might have made is.

A perfect storm of a lot of things.

But I think that by Carrie's trauma, I think that's gonna be with us for a long time. People still trying to process and on top of trying to process what so many people struggle with and the the surch in general talks about the loneliness right just you don't even really know how to be with people because you spent so much time by yourself. So for me, those are things that we're gonna be unpacking for a long time.

It's so interesting that you mentioned ass because I'm pretty sure that work didn't include a pandemic as like a life event that many of us would have been experiencing. And so now that adds like a point so to speak to people's ass school about the things that we are going to have to kind of navigate through for the rest of our lives.

Amen A three one hundred percent.

And I think in addition to that asis point is the universality of it, like we all get that point, you know what I'm saying, Like some points, we are all getting that point. And I think it just breaks my heart when I think about the number of people who might have been exposed to those things sitting at home by themselves, right, young adults, the number of young people, like the whole college experience. I'm a Howard University grad. I can think about some of the students I've talked to recently. You had a whole generation of young people. I think the graduating class this year, their first year or two years in college. They weren't on campus, so they're not going to get that back. Like those are opportunities that they're never going to have. And so I think you're right, it's we all got that. I don't want that point, but you know, we got it. We all got it, and it really is going to be with us for a long time.

Yeah, you know, doctor LFI something that I've talked a lot about kind of in this post pandemic space that we are in is the grief that I think a lot of us are, which you just talked about beautifully right, Like this whole idea that the graduating class of twenty twenty four also lost like their first two years in high school or in college, and that is also grief, right, Like it's not just about the lives we lost, and there were many, of course during the pandemic, but there are also those experiences. I wonder if you could share something for parents or caregivers or even the youth themselves about how to process the expectation that it would have been this one thing and then the reality of it being very different.

Yeah, that's a great question.

I will tell people what I do for myself and what I do for my children, and I do for my family, and I try to work on mindfulness. And the reason I say mindfulness is helpful for me is because I'm an anxious person, right.

It runs in my family. I'm positive.

I've never had a diagnosis, but I am positive I meet criteria for generalized anxiety.

It's everything right, and it's just always coming at me.

And so I think what's critical. And I did this when we lost my mother to pancreatic cancer, like eighteen years ago. It was be present. I have to be in this moment. So I would tell myself, Okay, Mama's still here. We at the hospital.

She's here.

I have her right now, and let me enjoy and be appreciative of this moment. I can touch her, she can speak to me that kind of thing, and I think the same thing is true for me for grief. Let me be present as an extension to that. I tell young people all the time, if you feel it, I want you to find a way.

To express it.

Right.

So, whether that's journaling, whether that's exercise, whether that's talking to somebody like doctor Joy or a licensed mental health professional, right, whatever that is, you have to get that stuff out because you cannot allow that grief to sit in fester, right because that grief, unresolved grief, that complicated grief, that complex grief, that can have physical health outcomes for us that aren't positive. And so it's important for us, particularly as people of color, with all the other stuff coming at us, we've got to be able to process greef. So we have to name it. We have to recognize that what we're feeling is grief. We have to be loving and forgiving of ourselves. It's okay to experience grief. You can get online and google what are the stages of grief and figure out where you are pretty easily. And then the final thing I say is, if you feel the emotions, allow yourself to feel the emotions as long as you're in a safe space.

Right.

Find that safe space might be in a bathroom, might be in your bedroom under the covers. But allow yourself to feel your feelings, because suppressing your feelings does not help manage grief. It is the expression of feelings. I think, at your own pace, in your own way, even for young people, that allows us to grieve in more healthy ways.

And grief understand it can take a long time, right.

Grief is not like you get a week off from work and you're supposed to be like fixed. I have this really good girlfriend, doctor Helen Sue. She has ancestry in Taiwan, and she taught me that in her culture, you have a year to grief. And she told me about this client she had once who wore a black armband after he lost the loved one and he kept it all for a year and was intentional. So what I did, We lost somebody close to us. So my daughter and I bought these little silver bracelets and you can add charms to them. They're very thin, and we bought them in honor of the person. And so a couple of people I know personally who've experienced different kinds of grief, I have bought them one of those bracelets and said, this is just your reminder. You take it off when you're ready to take it off. But this is just your reminder that you're going through grief. It's a difficult experience, and it's okay for you to feel your feelings, so that tangible thing to help you remember, Oh yeah, this feeling is grief, This sadness, this anger, this frustration, it's okay for me to feel.

This has always been very helpful to me.

Thank you for that. You know, you mentioned the Surgeon Generals, and you know all of the information he has shared around loneliness and how that is of course on the rise post pandemic, and he is mostly talking about that for adults, so I think we can only imagine what that may be like for our young people. Can you give us any ideas or tips to share around, like how to help young people cultivate community and you know, really decrease that experience of loneliness.

I think they have to go read books by people like doctor Joy where people talk about right, how sisterhood heals like.

It, bringing us together.

I think you can find work books that help young people process. We certainly use them in my house, right workbooks to help you process grief, or help you process loneliness, or help you develop social skills.

Right.

I think practicing with our kids, our young people, the people we care about, teaching them social skills. Right, So we think often it just happens by osmosis. They watch us and they get it. Everybody does know how to do that. So what can we give to our young people to teach them how to engage? And it's really not about you need to go doing social because that's what I did and it helped me. It's figuring out and paying attention to what kind of kid do I have to have a kid who shy? Do I have a kid who will fade into the woodwork? Do I have a kid who's like out there and nobody knows who they are as soon as they.

Hit the room. What kind of kid do I have?

What is their personality like? So if we understand them better, I think we can do a better job of calibrating the tools that we give them. It's all about coping skills, the tools that we give them to help them develop their own little toolkit for coping or managing relationships or managing interpersonal interactions, or managing their own emotions. But if we're not intentional with tools and we just hope that it's going to work, and we hope if they watch us they'll get it. I think we do our kids at disservice. So our job is to really equip and prepare them. But guess what, we got to have tools. We can't give them tools that.

We don't have.

So it's imperative that we develop a set of tools to help us manage some of those challenging things in our lives to be able to share those with our young people.

Doctor Elfie, is there anything we haven't talked about today that came up in your recent research report that you want to make sure we put on the radar or related to youth mental health?

Yes, one thing.

The only thing is to end on a hopeful note, and to say that for our young people of color, what they tell us is that they have hope for the future. So over seventy five percent of our young people when we surveyed them, talked about having hope for what was coming in the future for them. So even with all the struggles, our young people are so resilient and they find a way, you know, to find the best in things that are out there in the world. And then the other thing that they told us was that over sixty five percent of our young people have someone at least one person they love, which I thought was beautiful. I'm sorry for the thirty something percent who don't and around that same number had at least one person who they knew loved them, right, and so allowing space for our young people to talk about the things that they're excited about, the things that they're happy about, the things that bring them peace and joy, and the things that are good for their mental health. I would say that's the only other thing I would add in there, because you're young people, your children, my children, they're so beautiful and so wonderful, and if we can do any little thing to uplift them and support them and taking care of their mental health, I am all here for it. So I just am grateful for you, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about our work at the Acoma Project and our young people.

Thank you so much for that, Doctor Lpie. Please remind us where can we stay connected with you? What is the website for the Acoma Project and any social media channels you'd like.

To share absolutely so all socials. If we're a COMA project, it all runs together aa k Is and kite o, Emas and mary A a Cooma project. It's a take on Alkama West African I think for symbol. So we're on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, we got off the X don't mess with X, lead them alone, and we're on LinkedIn, and then our website is a Cooma Project dot org, and then people can always find me across all socials.

I always tease it looks like Drousie d r A l E.

So my son's friends Chris and me drowfi years ago when they were in middle school. So I've been Droughty forever and I'm literally everywhere as Drowfie. And the website is doctor Alfie dot com as.

Well, beautiful. We will be sure to include all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today, doctor Alfie. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Doctor Joy, I appreciate you absolutely.

I'm so glad Doctor Alfie was able to share her exercise with us today. To learn more about her and her work, visit the show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash session three five eight, and don't forget to text two of your girls right now and tell them to check out the episode. If you're looking for a therapist in your area, visit our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory. And if you want to continue digging into this topic or just be in community with other sisters, come on over and join us in the Sister Circle. It's our cozy corner of the Internet designed just for black women. You can join us at Community Therapy from blackgirls dot com. This episode was produced by Elise Ellis and Zaria Taylor. Editing was done by Dennison Bradford. Thank y'all so much for joining me again this week. I look forward to continuing this conversation with you all real soon. Take good care.

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The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a license 
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