Celebrating Our Stories of Cultural Resilience: Sharing Diverse Mental Health Stories
To celebrate and create sacred space for the experiences of AAPI, Black, and Hispanic communities and Disciples, during BIPOC Mental Health month, observed in July, the Mental Health and Wellness program of the National Benevolent Association presents a video series exploring aspects of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) mental health, wellness, resilience, and joy. This series features voices curated by Joselyn Spence, Director of the NBA’s Mental Health & Wellness program. Videos will feature voices from community activists, pastors, and therapists.
This series was created to increase awareness of the unique mental health challenges BIPOC individuals face, as well as an opportunity to see the nuances in those experiences and how the same racialized trauma affects each community differently. The NBA hopes these videos will create space for embodied listening and sharing of the authentic mental health stories and challenges of AAPI, Black, and Hispanic Disciples, as well as the ways cultural resilience and joy have been a balm for these communities. We encourage you to listen with empathy and consider how you can foster similar discussions in your own community.
We acknowledge that the mental health experiences of BIPOC communities and the need for space to express, lament, and celebrate, are indeed, real.
About BIPOC Mental Health Month
BIPOC Mental Health Month (formerly the Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Month) was founded by Congress in 2008, “to enhance public awareness of mental illness, especially within minority communities.” The American Counseling Association notes, “Black and Indigenous people and other people of color experience a broad spectrum of ongoing discrimination, oppression, and inequity rooted in America’s colonialist history, all of which foster both collective and individual trauma in those communities.”
