Mental health researcher Yasmine Simone Gray says she identifies as a complex trauma survivor, and resists the label of having a mental illness.
“ It’s a very particular push to try to label our distress as a disorder, and it really situates the problem within say my body, as opposed to say within the systems that have created the distress and the emotional experiences that have become part of my life,” she said.
Gray is research coordinator for a project run out of St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto asking people at risk of suicide and those who love them about gaps and barriers they have faced with getting help. She was recently interviewed by Nature Reviews Psychology about working with suicide survivors.
Gray spoke with People First Radio about conceptions of mental health, mental illness, lived experience, and systems of care.
She says mental health awareness campaigns don’t usually emphasize the importance of community in helping people through challenges.
“ People aren’t really taught how to be good community members to each other, they’re only taught that, ‘oh, like, I’m not a professional, so I can’t help,’ but you can. You can do active listening with your friends. You can hold space for your friends. You can take your friend for a coffee. You can distract your friend with a different activity. We know how to do that. That is a human skill. That’s not something that a professional necessarily needs to do,” she said.
“That’s one thing that I think I’d like to kind of reorient people to and wake people up to that, we can be doing everyday kind of support for the people in our lives, whether they are labeled with a mental health condition or not.”
During the interview, Gray mentioned a study from McGill University that found Black men with first-episode psychosis were significantly more likely to face coercive treatment than non-black men in the same circumstance. You can read that study here: https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.202000715
You can find more information on drapetomania here: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3106t.html
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