🍄 The New Health Club #19 - Racial Trauma Will Impact Mental Health
#psyched2020
This Sunday, June 7th, I will be speaking at Psyched2020 Conference - a conference exploring the growing psychedelic ecosystem. Click here to register for the conference.
#thisweek
We are taking a break from the podcast this week. Why is that you might ask? Well we were supposed to have an amazing therapist from New York on the show, a very impressive African-American woman and the founder of a therapist platform that addresses racial trauma.
But she was forced to cancel. She said she couldn’t speak. She said she couldn’t sleep anymore and has been waking up with clenching and grinding teeth. She told me that this would be a time of the “unspeakable”. So rather than find an alternative guest, we decided to give it a break this week.
With everything going on in the world right now, this week is a crucial time for checking our new reality: racism is alive and well, and those who deal with race-related violence and aggression will undoubtedly suffer from degrees of psychological trauma. So our task, our duty, in this situation, is to talk about this, on our - lets face it - privileged, white platform.
So here are our therapist’s book suggestions, if you’d like to read further…
• So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. This is a great primer.
• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo is a fantastic insight into how Americans in particular think about race, and her latest Me and White Supremacy, is getting similar praise.
• Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom is essential for an intersectional understanding of this issue.
I think I realised this week, how much racism can create trauma in people to the same extent as those experiencing war-related PTSD. In other words: racism, discrimination is turning into a mental health topic, more than ever. We must acknowledge that deeply.
Which is why, at The New Health Club, from now on we will be examining this much more closely. How much trauma can an individual take on? How much can one be assaulted and not become depressed or suffer from PTSD?
That’s why we will have Monnica Williams on the podcast soon, we’re just working on finding a date. She is a therapist and researcher at the University of Connecticut, leading the first-ever MDMA study to focus on the traumatic experiences of black, brown, and other minority groups. “We might call it race-based trauma or racial trauma, for short, and it’s basically when people have PTSD symptoms as a result of racism,” Williams said in an interview with the great Doubleblind Mag. You can read the full article here.
Our idea, our definition, our picture of mental health has to change, it has to become much more diverse. We are working hard on that here, using all the resources we have available.
#nextweek
We are coming to your screen soon! The New Health Club TV Show is in the making. We will be on YouTube and I can tell you, those interviews will be amazing. Watch out!
#somelightreading
B.C. MP calls for legalization of some psychedelic drugs - Winnipeg News
Psychedelic drugs could help treat the mental health epidemic we'll face after coronavirusa - The Independent
Scientists Explain How Psychedelic Drugs Can Lead People to Lose Their Sense of Self - The Swaddle
We’ll talk next week! Stay safe.
Anne