By Aria Brent
AFRO Staff Writer
abrent@afro.com
For the last 40 years the Black Mental Health Alliance(BMHA) has been healing and helping the people of Baltimore.
Trusted in the community, the organization routinely puts on culturally-relevant educational forums and offers referral services that support the health and well-being of Black people and their communities. The organization has a mission focused on developing, promoting and sponsoring trainings that support mental health education efforts.
BMHA executive director, Andrea Brown, and other members of their team spoke with the AFRO about the plans they have for the year 2024.
“The community is facing trauma that is related to the systemic racism that continues today,” said Brown, who has been the executive director of BMHA since March of 2020.
“The community is facing trauma that is related to the systemic racism that continues today. We need to call that out because we often feel less than that, but it’s based on a system of oppression that has come down through the years.”
andrea brown
Brown explained that being the head of the organization amidst the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t an easy task. She’s noted her time in the position has been engaging, exciting, saddening and yet, hopeful.
Much like Brown, the other members of the BMHA team have a lot of hope for the work that their organization does and the impact they’ll continue to make on the community. Each staff member who spoke with the AFRO focuses on a different demographic of the Black community– such as men and adolescents. They noted that different demographics come with different issues, however their goal of providing them with the resources they need is the same across all fields.
“I think one of the things that we have been successful in doing is educating our community– both the professional and the health community– and the community at large, about what’s affecting our mental health and well being,” explained long-time BMHA staff member, Richard A. Rowe. “We have also been good at referring our folks to culturally competent clinicians and therapists. If they are suffering or having issues related to depression, anxiety stress…they need to be connected to culturally responsive and culturally competent therapists, clinicians and mental health professionals who can understand what happened to them and address those issues in a forthright way.”
Rowe is the director of the National Training Institute for the Black Mental Health Alliance. Although a great portion of his work is centered around the well being of men and young boys, Rowe sees the problems that are deeply impacting Baltimore as an entirety. Rowe says that he thinks one of the greatest issues plaguing the Baltimore community is their inability to acknowledge the trauma and suffering they’ve faced.
“The greatest mental health issue in Baltimore City is our inability to acknowledge that we have suffered historical and contemporary trauma,” stated Rowe. “Humiliation, demonization and dehumanization cause us to respond to each other in not the most loving, caring and optimal way. Without this understanding and acknowledgement, we are at each other, we are harming each other, we are ignoring the needs of our children and our youth, and we are not taking care of one another in a manner that I think we must and that we should.”
Keeping the community a priority is always on BMHA’s to-do list. They help the community heal with their Salwa Bona community conversation circles, a youth alliance program, their annual youth summit and a series of trainings that are available to both clinicians and the community.
Brown noted that the organization is going to continue to have these events throughout 2024, but they also have plans to launch some new initiatives.
“We’re really working to launch a national campaign around health and wholeness and healing. We are working to launch a healing tour. We haven’t decided whether that’s going to start on HBCU campuses or not but that’s part of our work,” Brown explained. “One of the other things that will happen this year is the release of a Black paper and the paper will examine the mental health of Black people in Baltimore. We’ll come from a historical context, and we’ll talk about systemic racism– not only how did we get here, but what’s the call to action to get us out?”
Known for their groundbreaking methods of addressing the intersection of racism and mental health, BMHA has held events such as their annual Racism and Mental Health Symposium, which was the first symposium of its kind in Maryland when it first started in 2020. Just as they’ve done for the last four decades, BMHA is continuing their hands-on approach to demystify the stigma surrounding mental health, all the while figuring out what the people need.
“I think that symposium changed the game because on almost a national level, we got to call out the correlation between racism and mental health,” shared Brown. “Through our work in barbershops and salons, we have changed the narrative. People understand that it’s okay not to be okay and we want to make mental health look sexy–we want to reduce the stigma.”
As BMHA continues to dedicate themselves to Baltimore’s Black community, they’re keeping a very special focus on the future of Charm city–-the youth. With a series of special programming centered around the mental health of young people, they’re preparing the next generation on how to disassemble the stereotypes surrounding mental health.
“I want our young people to continue to do the work. Our young people are already very clear about what they will and will not stand for. I think we learned that, in one instance being the Freddie Gray uprisings,” explained Nia Jones, director of the youth and college division for BMHA. “Another instance is the way in which young people have been interacting with political leaders here in Baltimore, for Healing City Baltimore.”
“Personally, I want to continue to see them stand for and be very clear about what they need for their mental health,” said Jones. “I want to see them take it further. I want to see them become the next leaders in this space, and be very clear about what they need for themselves as well as for their families.”