Mental Health Stigma in BIPOC Communities and How We’re Unlearning It

Silence was once protection, but healing asks us to speak.

Here’s one a lot of us heard growing up: “Don’t tell people our business.”

Or maybe it was an understood truth for you that no one needed to say out loud. You learned which things were okay to discuss in public, which things could be discussed around the dinner table, and which things felt safer living in your mind, unspoken. You could be loved so deeply and still feel unsure where to take your hardest feelings.

BIPOC communities are not a monolith, and our relationships with mental health are not all the same, but maybe the pressure to push past pain, the fear of being judged, or the feeling that seeking therapy would mean exposing your family rather than caring for yourself, feels familiar to you too. For some of us, keeping the tough stuff private offered protection in a world where being misunderstood could be dangerous for us or the people we cared about. For others, there simply wasn’t much room to talk feelings when getting through the day took everything we had in us.

Recognizing this history doesn’t mean we have to hold onto every lesson it left us.

Mental health stigma in BIPOC communities sometimes sounds like, “Other people have it worse, don’t complain” or, “You’re warm and fed. What do you have to be depressed about?” Over time, those messages can become the questions we ask ourselves before we allow ourselves to seek support.

You don’t have to reject your culture or blame the people who raised you to unlearn stigma. It can look like making room for something they may not have had: the chance to be supported without first proving how much struggle you can take.

Faith, family, community, and therapy do not have to compete, in fact they can really complement each other. You can value the ways these spaces have cared for you while also seeking something different through therapy. Culturally responsive therapy actually makes room for those relationships, cultures, and values, rather than asking you to leave them at the door.

So how about we start here:

• Notice the message you inherited. When you imagine asking for help, what and whose words do you hear?
• Try a different response. “I should be able to handle this” can become, “I’m allowed to have support while I handle this.”
• Start slow and safe. Speaking up might begin with a trusted friend or therapist, maybe not a conversation with your whole family.
• Honour your boundaries. You do not have to share every detail or convince everyone that therapy is worthwhile before choosing it for yourself.

Through November, take some moments of reflection around the messages you want to carry forward and what you would like to do differently when it comes to support. Remember that you can honour your family or culture without making silence the price of belonging to it. And when you’re ready to begin speaking at a pace that feels right for you, remember that someone willing to listen is waiting for you right here at Jhanelle Peters Psychotherapy.