Approximately 7.5 million African-Americans have a diagnosed mental illness, and up to 7.5 million more are potentially navigating life undiagnosed. African-American women are over-represented in these statistics, as a result of racism, sexism, microaggressions in the workplace, low-income jobs, predisposed health conditions, and multiple role responsibilities, all of which impact their overall mental health.
In recent years, the tide has shifted when discussing therapy and mental health. African-Americans are now more likely to seek out therapists, but not without difficulty in searching for Black/brown mental health clinicians. Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, Atlanta-based psychologist founded Therapy For Black Girls, a directory of resources and mental health professionals for Black women. What started as a Google doc is now a database of over 800 therapists, Therapy For Black Girls (the website, and podcast of the same name) has become the destination for Black women looking to find a therapist.
Recently, I spoke with Dr. Joy and asked ways that we can put our mental health first today and beyond. Here are the gems she dropped.
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Carving out some time for solitude.
"Make sure you're setting aside time daily for journaling, meditation, or prayer. We need to make sure that we're allowing ourselves that time to tune into our thoughts, and how we're feeling in order to access how we're showing up for ourselves, and others."
Get your body moving.
"Physical activity is paramount. You need to keep your body [active] with whatever exercise makes you feel good (cardio, dance class, yoga, etc.) so that you can release those feel-good hormones called endorphins."
Paying attention to sleep.
"Far too often, we don't take into account how rest is related to our mental health. Studies have shown that 6-8 hours of sleep every night improves brain functionality, your muscles have the opportunity to recover, and your memory is processed and stored for learning. Getting enough sleep also allows you to feel energized and helps enhance your concentration."
Stay off your phone at least an hour before bedtime.
"Allowing your brain time to shut down before you go to bed. When you're scrolling before bedtime, your mind stays active, and long after you've put your phone down to go to sleep"
When police brutality videos surface online, don’t watch them.
"I understand that we're posting in an attempt to bring awareness, I also want you to reconsider what's happening. Because many of us are desensitized to those videos, we don't realize how they can impact us mentally. I think people need to know that you can still show solidarity and advocate while not sharing those videos that can trigger you. Also, consider turning off the autoplay button on your social media channels so that they don't just appear on your feed."
For those in therapy, remember that your work is for you.
"As a community, we often want to help one another, especially as it relates to healing (and even exploring therapy) but you need to remember that your work, is for you. And while it can be great for you to share what you're learning with your loved ones, and how helpful it's been for you, we have to remember that we are ultimately only responsible for ourselves."
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Those rumors were more than laid to rest when Jodie and Joshua went to the 2023 Oscars together earlier this year, and even more recently, when they celebrated her birthday together last month during the September unveiling of the Lotus Emeya.
Jodie Turner-Smith celebrates her birthday with husband Joshua Jackson at the unveiling of the new fully-electric Lotus Emeya on September 07, 2023 in New York City.
Brian Ach/Getty Images for Lotus
Despite seeming particularly happy and in love, perhaps the writing was already written on the wall even then. In the past, Jodie has been very celebratory publicly about her love for her estranged husband, even boldly recounting their love story for the books in a 2021 interview with Seth Meyers.
When Jodie and Joshua met, it was while at his birthday party in 2018. Their relationship was hot and heavy from the start, with Jodie openly noting that they began as a "one-night stand." During her 2021 interview with Seth Meyers, she jokingly referred to their love story as a "three-year one-night stand." She shared:
"First of all, I saw him before he saw me and when I saw him, I was like, 'I want that.' And then when he saw me, I just pretended like I didn't see him. He had to yell across the room to me, and I was wearing this T-shirt from a movie called Sorry to Bother You and [actress] Tessa Thompson plays a character called Detroit, and she has this T-shirt that says, 'The Future Is Female Ejaculation.'
"And so, he shouts across the room, 'Detroit!' He comes over and… does this really cute, charming thing that he does and just all night -- he just basically followed me around the party."
The couple were together from that moment forth, and even made things "Instagram official" less than two weeks later while on a dinner date. Joshua would later clarify to Insider that the night they met in 2018 was not a 'one-night stand' or a 'three-year one-night stand' like his then-wife joked but instead, it was "technically a three-night stand."
"It was sealed with a kiss that night and then we didn't leave each other's sides for, well, three years now," Joshua continued at the time.
In a July 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Joshua dropped more details about the why behind getting married. He revealed that he didn't know he wanted to get married to Jodie until "the moment she asked me."
"She asked me on New Year's Eve. We were in Nicaragua. It was very beautiful, incredibly romantic, we were walking down the beach and she asked me to marry her."
He added, "I did not know [she would propose], but she was quite adamant and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made."
Joshua Jackson Reveals Jodie Turner-Smith Proposed To Him
Jodie received quite a bit of flack for proposing to Joshua because it goes against tradition and what society sees as acceptable for a woman to do to a man, and proposing isn't one of them. No matter how much time has passed, the viewpoints around who should do the proposing and who should be proposed to are still very traditional.
After being on the receiving end of such backlash, Joshua would later clarify to the media in a separate interview that it wasn't just Jodie's proposal to him that sealed the deal of them getting married, he proposed to her too. She might have initiated it, but Joshua followed through.
"I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn't give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist," he explained to Refinery29 that same year. "We were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic."
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He continued, "And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, 'This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too].'"
"She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], 'You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.' And then, 'I would like the opportunity to re-propose to you and do it the old-fashioned way down on bended knee.' So, that's actually how the story ended up."
Joshua and Jodie would eventually marry in December 2019. Shortly thereafter, Jodie gave birth to the couple's first child, Janie, in 2020.
In a recent interview with Elle UK, Jodie shared the ways becoming a mother to Juno helped to heal her of her wounds from colorism she experienced in the past. "It's interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world," Jodie shared with the outlet.
She continued, "Then I fell in love with my husband and we talked about having kids. I did have this mini pause, where I was like, 'She's going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I'd always felt a little bit tormented by.' Now that I've got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I've been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colorism."
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