For Mental Health Awareness Month, author, educator and activist Blair Imani spoke with Blavity about the mental health challenges some individuals in the LGBTQ+ community may face and how those who are struggling can seek to manage their mental health.
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00:00Hi, my name is Blair Imani. I'm the creator of Smarter in Seconds, and I'm here with Blavity to discuss mental health in the LGBTQ plus and black community.
00:16Speaking to my own experiences with mental health as a queer person, as a bisexual woman,
00:21I think one of the most difficult things is trying to form your own identity,
00:25while constantly being gaslit by society as though you don't exist.
00:30Recently, I had the privilege of meeting with the Biden administration around bisexual health policy.
00:35And in a lot of ways, the US health system doesn't even function in a way that recognizes that bisexuals exist.
00:41So how can you understand yourself even if health policy won't even honor the fact you exist?
00:46In some regards, LGBTQ people are told that we aren't legitimate, that we have a mental illness instead of an identity.
00:54And that can be really difficult. And so it's this constant ebb and flow of figuring out who you are,
01:00while being told that you can't exist or that you aren't valid.
01:04And that can cause things like anxiety that can cause things like depression.
01:07And so I think that it's important to look at the full landscape of mental health when it comes to LGBTQ plus identity
01:13and not just say, oh, LGBTQ plus people have higher instances of depression or anxiety, but to instead look at why is that?
01:20It's because we're constantly being gaslit.
01:25I think some unique difficulties that LGBTQ plus people have when it comes to mental health is being believed and understood.
01:36I mean, you sit in a therapist's office if you can get access to a therapist, because in the United States,
01:40it can be quite difficult to have that mental health access.
01:43So you're in your therapist's office, which is already a journey to get to.
01:46And you start talking about your ex-girlfriend or you start talking about your current boyfriend as a queer person.
01:52And you have people who will completely interrupt the session by trying to address those things.
01:57There's this medicalization of queerness where it's not something to be respected or honored in some spaces,
02:04but something to be cured or fixed.
02:06Our transgender and genderqueer siblings go through this immensely.
02:10You know, queer folks go through this as far as being forced to pray the gay away
02:16or change themselves in order to be legitimate in society.
02:20And all that has immense mental health consequences.
02:23I think one of the things I'm often saying around mental health care is that we can see throughout history
02:29that where the harm comes in as it relates to queer identity is when people are forced to not be themselves.
02:35That's where the harm comes in. That's where you see psychological trauma.
02:38That's where you see just the devastation of people being denied the opportunity to be themselves,
02:44which is one of the most fundamental things in society.
02:46And I think the way that we can support this more is, you know, when we look through different pop culture celebrities,
02:52like Lil Nas X, for example, I think it was very telling to see the shift that we've had as a community
02:58to recognize Lil Nas X as, you know, a gay rapper, a queer rapper who is open about himself.
03:05And that maybe wasn't the same, you know, grace that was given to other queer artists.
03:12We have Big Freedia, who's a fixture of, you know, the hip hop and bounce community.
03:17And I think she is accepted in a way that is a constant shift versus how Lil Richard was treated
03:23or how Prince's very clear gender queerness was on display, even if he didn't claim that identity for himself.
03:29So I think it starts with examining how we talk about these things in non-personal spaces
03:36when it has to do with celebrities and then bringing it to the personal and shutting down those conversations
03:40that medicalize or stigmatize queer identity as though it is a mental health issue.
03:45And then validly discussing the mental health issues that come out of being treated that way,
03:49not as something that a person needs to go through by themselves, but honoring it as a community effort.
03:55Because, you know, we wouldn't have to come out if we were not constantly assumed to be something else.
04:00If we instead had a world where people could just express themselves, talk about their mental health struggles,
04:05talk about their experiences, instead of the expectation being that I have to tell you who I am
04:10and until then you feel like I'm lying to you, we're not going to get anywhere.
04:14And so I think that's changing slowly but surely, but we can always use more of it.
04:26So the systemic issues that are facing LGBTQ plus people are immense.
04:34One, to just have legitimacy and access to health care.
04:37But I'll give a specific example.
04:39Recently, as I mentioned, I was able to meet with the Biden administration around bisexual health policy.
04:44And if we use the example of domestic violence as an example, say you're a bisexual woman
04:51and you have been dating a man and you've broken up with that man and you're now with a woman.
04:56Well, because of the biphobia in society and the sexism in society,
05:00you may have an experience where that former male partner is coming after you and your current woman partner.
05:07And what we see when it comes to accessing health care, accessing resources, accessing shelters,
05:13is that you would be turned away from a straight shelter because you're currently with a woman
05:18and you'll also be turned away from a queer shelter, potentially, because your former partner is a man.
05:23And so that's a perfect example of how people are falling through the gaps of care and of access
05:29and that has to do with domestic violence.
05:31Now, domestic violence isn't just happening in a vacuum. It's not just physical violence.
05:35It's also extremely psychological, the care that you can access at shelters that, you know,
05:39need constantly more support and more access to care.
05:42And so it's taking these different, you know, bi plus coalitions to come into the administration,
05:49to come into the health care infrastructure and say, hey, we're here, we're legitimate and we need access to care.
05:55Instead, what we see is reporting on bisexual women having higher rates of mental illness,
06:01instead of saying bisexual women experience discrimination, bisexual women experience intimate partner violence
06:08because of biphobia, not because they're bisexual, and really shifting that narrative
06:12so that we were not putting the onus and the blame on the individual themselves
06:16and then doing that on an institutional level so that we have doctors and medical experts
06:20who are trained on how to address these issues without siloing people or dismissing people and their identities.
06:26It's honoring the fact that or acknowledging the fact that the United States American Psychological Association
06:33until the 1970s looked at gay identity, looked at queerness as a mental illness.
06:39And there's still a lot of people who look at it that way.
06:41We have conversion therapy being very widespread in the United States, which is not therapeutic at all.
06:46It's abuse where people are forced to change who they are in order to become cured or fixed.
06:51And those are horrible things. And so it's recognizing that we have people who need mental health care.
06:58We also have people who have been mistreated by the mental health care infrastructure
07:03and that if we don't redress those things, then we can't get to caring for people
07:07because we're not even honoring their humanity.
07:09We're not honoring the history and we're not working to undo that harm.
07:12It's very similar to what we experience just across the Black community with medical care of distrusting the medical system
07:18because we have a reason to distrust.
07:20And so I think within the queer community for Black queer folks and for queer folks of all identities,
07:25it's that same kind of distrust, but also the infrastructure not accommodating us
07:29or acknowledging us or doing that work to overcome that history.
07:34I think that one of the most important things in an LGBTQ plus person's life or anybody's life, for that matter, is the access to community.
07:43And so how do we create that infrastructure?
07:45How to create those safe spaces for people who might not come from affirming families?
07:48One thing that is fundamental to Black identity within the United States is creating chosen family, found families.
07:57We've had to do this since chattel slavery, where we didn't know our families because we were separated.
08:02If you look at these documents following reconstruction, when slavery was ended,
08:07except for as punishment for a crime with the 13th Amendment, you're seeing people saying,
08:12this was my sister. What plantation is she at? Where is she now?
08:15And so it's that family building in those non-traditional ways that's fundamental to Black identity.
08:21And in that way, it's also fundamental to queerness, the intersections thereupon of being able to say,
08:25yeah, I was born into a family or a circumstance where I'm not accepted,
08:29but that doesn't mean that I'm destined to not be accepted.
08:31It means that I can build that community myself.
08:34I think we have to acknowledge that we can all be allies to one another,
08:38regardless of the identities that you hold.
08:40You can always show up for somebody else in a different way.
08:43And so in that regard, the ways that you show up can be to harm that person,
08:46or it can be to heal that person.
08:48Healing doesn't just happen in a therapist's office where you're sitting one-to-one,
08:51laying on an ottoman, talking to somebody about your feelings.
08:54It can be addressing those harms.
08:56It can be, hey, you know, growing up, I made a lot of fun of you because you were more feminine.
09:00Well, I really want to apologize for that, especially now that I know you're gay.
09:04It's taken me a long time to figure out how to deal with that.
09:09Well, I really want to apologize for that, especially now that I know you're gay.
09:12It's taking that onus upon yourself to recognize the harm that you did
09:15and recognize the healing that you can do.
09:18And I think that's something innate in the humanity of individuals.
09:23And when we look at mental health infrastructure,
09:25it's not just going to a building or to an office.
09:28It's about healing in public together,
09:30of standing up for somebody as they come out to their family,
09:33being their family if their biological family doesn't accept them.
09:37Those are all tangible things that cost zero money to do
09:39because it's literally just your energy, your love and your empathy.
09:50So as somebody who has been on a mental health journey since I was literally eight years old,
09:54I have some practical tips for how you work through your mental health journey,
09:58how you identify it and how you move forward for LGBTQ plus folks in particular.
10:02One of the first things is to recognize where those feelings come from.
10:06This individualistic society that we have is so preoccupied with placing the spotlight on the individual.
10:13What's your problem now?
10:15It's your, you know, it's now your responsibility to create a solution.
10:17And yes, there is that responsibility aspect.
10:19But where are those issues coming from?
10:21I think looking at the broader issues that we're attached to is fundamental in any healing journey
10:25because then you can stop and think, hmm, it's not my fault that I'm feeling this way.
10:29It's not my fault that I have mental health struggles,
10:31but it is my responsibility to work through them.
10:34But to recognize that it's not a personal failure.
10:36It's an opportunity to grow, to become your best self and to learn.
10:40I think another practical tip is to look at the full range of care options.
10:45Medication, therapy, talk therapy, sensory integration therapy.
10:50There's just so many different things that we can do to accommodate ourselves
10:53and to be able to get through life in a way that's not painful
10:57or as difficult as it might be otherwise if we're not accommodated.
11:01So the first thing being to like, let me like, so you can like chop it up
11:06and go back to my intro and then start here.
11:08Sorry.
11:09The first thing being is to not feel a sense of blame or fault for who you are
11:14or for your mental health struggles or for your queer identity.
11:17Guilt is something that is very hard to work through,
11:20especially if that's the type of environment you grew up in, but it doesn't help you heal.
11:24So removing yourself from that guilt, maybe identifying the circumstances,
11:28the context, the systems of oppression that have resulted in your suffering
11:32and then being able to say, hey, it's not on me.
11:35It might be on me to heal, but it's not on me that I'm in this position in the first place.
11:39So that's one.
11:40Two is to look at the full range of options, whether it's medication, therapy,
11:46changing your lifestyle.
11:48For example, a relative of mine has very severe depression
11:51and he learned that actually he had the highest dose that he could be on
11:55for his depression medication.
11:56And he actually has to work out to get more endorphins to be able to get through life.
12:02And part of that came from being bullied as a queer young person.
12:05And so it's recognizing that there's no one size fits all anxiety.
12:10There's no one size fits all depression.
12:12You have to go on your own journey, but learning from other people
12:15and accommodating yourself and doing so unapologetically is key.
12:18And I think the third thing is don't feel like you have to explain yourself.
12:22I can respect you and I don't have to understand your identity.
12:26And sometimes it's hard for us to demand that respect back
12:29or to move through the world in a way where we are not apologizing for ourselves
12:33because we've been forced to for potentially your entire life.
12:36So to recognize that I don't need you to understand what bisexuality means to me
12:42or what anxiety or ADHD means to me.
12:44I just need you to know that this is how I'm accommodating myself.
12:47This is who I am.
12:48And that as a human being, just like you, I'm deserving of respect.
12:51So I think those three things are key.
12:53And it's really just about self-preservation
12:55because there's so many variables in the world that we can't control.
12:58Sometimes we can't even control ourselves or our mental health.
13:00So the best thing we can do is try to accommodate ourselves
13:02and to give ourselves forgiveness, love, and to fight through that guilt that you might feel.
13:15Oh, definitely.
13:18So when it comes to LGBTQ plus identity, this doesn't exist in a silo.
13:22There are other marginalized identities, ability, class, access, race.
13:29There's just so many different factors.
13:31For myself, being a Muslim woman, religion.
13:33A lot of people have different aspects of trauma
13:36or can't even get access within the LGBTQ plus community itself
13:40because of existing anti-Blackness or ableism or anti-religious bias
13:45that might even come from a place of pain for many people with religious trauma.
13:48So working through those things and recognizing, again, that we can always be allies to one another.
13:54We can always be, you know, if you're the person who's invited to the table,
13:57it's about recognizing who's being left behind and not speaking on their behalf,
14:01but making sure that you're passing the mic so that person can advocate for themselves.
14:05Recognizing that there's no people who are voiceless,
14:08but instead people who are silenced in the metaphorical sense
14:10and sometimes in the very literal sense.
14:13So I think that there's just always a story people have.
14:18Identities are not static or stagnant.
14:21Myself being a bisexual Muslim woman, that's my unique experience.
14:25That's still my Blair Imani experience.
14:27It doesn't mean it's going to be the exact same experience of another bisexual Muslim woman.
14:33It means that we might have some similarities and commonalities.
14:36We might have resources that we could both benefit from.
14:39But fundamentally, identities don't mean that you suddenly take on a monolithic identity.
14:44That's why Blavity was started.
14:45I remember way back when it was just to discuss that blackness is not a monolith.
14:50Just like queerness is not a monolith. Disability is not a monolith.
14:53Religion is not a monolith.
14:54And so I think so long as you move through the world in a way where you're recognizing
14:58that your complexities just mirror somebody else's complexities,
15:02that as complex of a person you are, everybody else is.
15:05We all have our own stories.
15:06And the metaphor I try to use, and I think it's very good in organizing spaces,
15:10is that if we can understand our identities as different petals on the flower of who we are,
15:16that when we come together, we are creating a bouquet.
15:19And we need to arrange ourselves in a way that honors our talents,
15:22that creates space for people.
15:23If you grew up being a well-nourished sunflower,
15:26maybe you need to take a step back so that, you know,
15:28the little hydrangeas can have their moment as well.
15:31And so it's thinking about all those things coming together in this garden of life
15:35and trying to maximize your privilege and your access and your resources,
15:39not only for your own benefit, but for the benefit of other people,
15:42whether they're like you or whether they're not.
15:44But I think one of the toughest things that we have to work through in various communities
15:49is recognizing that just because you have one perspective on what an identity is
15:54doesn't mean that there's not going to be variations on that
15:59and that you have to make space for it.
16:01And sometimes that space means making that space within your own heart
16:04by fighting through your own biases.
16:06Just because somebody's, you know, LGBTQ+,
16:08doesn't mean that they don't have anti-LGBTQ plus beliefs
16:12because we are all socialized in these systems of harm,
16:14which means we all have to heal from them in order to be better human beings to one another.
16:26Ooh, I'm gonna get spicy on this one.
16:29So if you really want to be a better human being to people,
16:33then how do allies and accomplices help to be that?
16:37How do mental health professionals help to be that,
16:39to be there for people, to be allies and accomplices for LGBTQ plus people?
16:43I think one of the first things is to question
16:46and to critically think through the assumptions that you carry
16:49and that you've been told and that you've been taught.
16:52Right now we're seeing these immense and sweeping bans on, you know,
16:57gender-affirming care, on drag queens,
17:00and it's all under the guise of trying to control people's gender expression,
17:03just like we're seeing with the bans on, you know,
17:06reproductive care to control people's bodies,
17:08to dictate who has a baby and when,
17:11and that in many, you know, states increasingly,
17:13that if you're pregnant, you're giving birth,
17:15unless you can get out of that state.
17:17So we're in these terrifying times,
17:19and where are all these things coming from?
17:21The assumptions that a certain class of people has the right to care
17:24for a certain other class of people,
17:26that they can dictate, that they can be paternalistic.
17:29Sometimes we carry that within ourselves
17:31because we've internalized those belief systems
17:33because we've all been taught it.
17:35You know, if we're socialized in a white supremacy,
17:37that means that we're also going to have folks
17:39who are harmed by white supremacy being people
17:41who are agents of white supremacy
17:43because you're socialized through that,
17:45just like homophobia, just like transphobia.
17:47And so I think for mental health professionals in particular,
17:50it's incredibly important to check yourself
17:52before you wreck yourself when it comes to discussing
17:55different identities that you might not be a part of,
17:58being extremely open to saying,
18:00I'm not sure about that, let me move forward.
18:02I've done quite a few trainings
18:04with different mental health practitioners,
18:06therapists, psychiatrists, et cetera,
18:08on how to talk around gender,
18:10how to talk around, you know, sexual trauma,
18:12how to talk around sexuality, sexual orientation.
18:14And you don't have to have an identity
18:17to provide care for somebody who's from a different identity.
18:20But what you do have to have is humility
18:22to have, you know, the depth of your own ego
18:24to recognize that just because I am in a position of power
18:28doesn't mean that I know better for this person
18:30or know better for their life.
18:31I'm there to help them.
18:32I'm there to be an accomplice and an ally
18:34in their own healing journey
18:35and to show up in the ways that I'm asked to show up.
18:38So those things are incredibly important.
18:40Question those assumptions and biases that you may hold.
18:43Recognize where they come from.
18:44Move straight from guilt to fixing it,
18:47to recognizing it, to healing from it.
18:49And recognize that just because you're in a position of power
18:52and that really being on a mental health journey with somebody
18:55shouldn't involve a power dynamic,
18:57even though sometimes it does.
18:58But it should be a healing dynamic.
19:00It should be a mutual respect dynamic.
19:03And I think also for LGBTQ plus folks,
19:06help the allies be allies.
19:08Help the accomplices be accomplices by, you know, speaking up.
19:12Of course, they have to make space for us to be able to do that.
19:14But know that sometimes there are people in your corner.
19:16So many of us go through the experience
19:18of constantly feeling like we're fighting for our lives,
19:21we're battling, especially for folks who have, you know,
19:24the battle wound, psychological or physical,
19:26of bullying, trauma, religious trauma, et cetera.
19:29But recognize that sometimes we can trust people,
19:33that it is healthy and important to trust people again
19:36to be on your side.
19:37But fundamentally, that starts with loving and trusting yourself.
19:41And if you can't get there yet, respecting yourself,
19:43because that will carry you through.