Ernest Lee McLean Jr. : World Life Memorial Scholarship

Growing up in a single parent household in a low income environment I have witnessed first hand what mental health does to black families. My mother was a single mother raising three children with no support, worked multiple jobs, and attempted attending school to further her education to get out of a trying situation. My mother was never diagnosed with any type of mental health due to the stigma, uneducation, and ignorance that plagues the Black community as a whole. Not only did watching my mom navigate the world with mild signs of depression and anxiety, but also experiencing the same feelings for myself made it more personal. When I was in middle school I was living in a very toxic environment with extended family members that created a very isolating, dark, and hopeless time in my life. I knew that my life had value but at the time it was hard to see that with all the chaos around me and the feeling of becoming a product of my environment. That is when I discovered journaling, it helped me get all of the scary thoughts and feelings that were too heavy to externalize. I found my peace by addressing the hurt and the heaviness. As the years passed the depression lessened but then anxiety crept in with age. It got to a point that it started to affect my academic life while balancing the newfound freedom of adulthood, it became so suffocating and not me that I reached out for help. I started therapy and those feelings and habits that I chalked up to overthinking was given the name anxiety and everything started to piece together and make sense. For generations Black people have not been awarded the luxury of reaching out for help and having the choice to get involved in therapy or counseling. My choice in becoming a child and adolescent psychologist did not come upon me lightly, it came with the weight of my mother, the overlooked angry Black women who struggle with anxiety, the misunderstood and ultra masculine Black man that is depressed, and all of the throwaway children and elderly people that battle with severe mental health issues. My dedication to mental health is fueled by all the future Black boys and girls that are told they have to always be strong and they have to be what society wants them to be. It comes with the honor to carry the future with the demonstration that Black people deserve softness and to fully experience life with all the feelings that might come.

My little brother had just been violently killed. A few short moments later I was watching the only grandmother I'd evern known slowly live her final days while Alzheimer's and dementia ate away at her mental health. At the time I was questioning my sexuality, had just been laid off from a job that I loved, and my dad and I weren't on speaking terms. The proverbial cherry on top was the fact that my stress response system was in a constant state of arousal because I'm a Black man in America, and with every hashtag and instagram post connected to "trauma porn," my mental health took a hit as I thought "That could have been me." I felt like a leaf in the middle of a hurricane. Finally, with some encouragement from a friend, I made the decision to get a therapist. At the time, I had great insurance, and I lived in Los Angeles. I had three basic qualities that I wanted to find in the mental health professional with whom I wanted to work: 1. Black, 2. male, and 3. LGBTQ+ affriming. It would be 8 months before I would find a therapist, and that therapist only fulfilled two of the asks -- male and LGBTQ+ affirming. Here I am, years later, and the statistics surrounding Black individuals in the field of mental health health are abysmal. 5.1% of therapists are Black. That number is up from 4.1% in 2021 at the height of the pandemic. Of that 5.1%, only 1% is male. Only 12% of therapists are LGBTQ+. But let's focus soley on the first two numbers in the data set. If there is a convention for licensed therapists, and 2,000 professionals in the field showed up, accordning to the most recentl data, only 102 of those professionals would be Black. Of the 102 Black therapists present, only 1 would be Black and male-identifying. What inspired my decision to return to school in my 40s? That. I think about the history of Black individuals in this country, and the way distress has activated and fired certain genes within us and literally altered our DNA. I think about how intergenerational trauma links us to high blood pressure, compulsive behavior, shorter lives, and schizophrenia. I think about how when my mom would yell at us and tell us to "quit runnin' in the house" and to "go sit down somewhere" because we were "making her nervous," she was really saying, "Hey, babies. I'm having a little trouble self-regulating right now, and my stress response system is fired. Can you give me a few moments of stillness?"...but how she wasn't even near a resource that would give her access to that language. What inspired my decision to return to school in my 40s? That. Currently, I'm working on a combined degree to get my MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. My ambition is singular: create nuanced resources for the Black community that connect with their mental health and create a way to get a steady and manageable stream of access to the Black community. It's a heavy lift, and nothing about that discourages me. While I am not *the* solution, I can be a part of the solution. There are also others who feel just as passionately as I. Beyond that, it is my hope that my presence in and underrepresented industry sparks inspiration in others to do the same. Maybe there will be another young man like me struggling for connection. And maybe -- just maybe -- he'll find me.