- Just ahead on "American Black Journal," our Black church in Detroit series looks at the mental health struggles of young African Americans.

We're gonna talk about what's causing these significant challenges and how the Black church is supporting young people's mental health.

You do not wanna miss this important conversation, so stay right there.

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(upbeat music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

Today we're continuing our Black church in Detroit series, which is produced in partnership with the Ecumenical Theological Seminary and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the latest report from the US Office of Minority Health shows suicide is the third leading cause of death for African Americans ages 10 to 24.

Now experts point to several reasons for stress among our young people, including peer pressure, racial trauma, financial instability, and self-doubt that's fueled by social media.

Here to talk about how the Black church offers a safe space and support are Bishop Mbiyu Chui.

He is a senior pastor at the Shrine of the Black Madonna, Reverend JB Fields, who's a youth pastor at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, and Karra Thomas, who chairs an interfaith based collaborative at Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network.

Welcome all three of you to "American Black Journal."

- Thanks.

- So I wanna start with something that I just read there in the open, this idea that the Black church is a safe space for our young people to first of all talk about mental health and then find support.

I'm not sure that everybody necessarily realizes what that means or how that plays out.

So I wanna give each of you a chance to talk about what you see in terms of young people in the Black church confronting this crisis in mental health.

Bishop, I'll start with you.

- Okay, so I've served as a youth pastor many years before I became Senior Pastor, so I've always had an eye for young people and their mental health.

But over the years I learned that the church doesn't have to do everything.

The church has to be a safe space.

So currently we have several organizations that have housing at the Shrine who come to us, right, to offer different kinds of services.

But certainly a listening circle, a place where they can come and share and talk is very therapeutic, especially in times like these.

So we try to provide that on a regular basis.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- We have a group of, an intergenerational group, that has their meetings at our church called Building Black Brick Masters.

So you have Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers.

- And Boomers, wow.

- So we all add to that pool of resources for mentoring, for counseling and therapy for our youth, so.

- Yeah, yeah, what does that look like at Hartford?

- Well, it looks like quite a few things.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- First and foremost, it starts with Black Liberation theology, saying that God made everyone, and when he made us, we were good.

We are good.

So that helps us to strengthen the self-love of our young people.

And then also we have a number of different fellowships, not only with the youth alone, the teens alone, the youth and the teens together, but also throughout the generations so that we can combat isolation as well.

And then of course we have a number of different programs, a number of partners, but even in our teen church and our youth church, it's such a small gathering around a table where we can look the students in the eyes where we can say, hey, this week feels a little bit different.

Can we chat for a little bit?

So it's really increasing that personal connection and reminding ourselves that the Bible says God puts the lonely in families.

We have no clue what individuals experienced during the pandemic, but now we can say, hey, let's work to make sure that you're exactly where you need to be and getting better.

- Yeah, Karra?

- Having worked within the health systems as a prevention coordinator for our region for 20 years, maybe more than that now, working with the youth programs and having to work with children's ministries and different programs within a variety of faiths, and so the safe havens are our faith-based organizations.

- Yeah.

- They are the places that you, any and every person has to go to a lot of times to our faith leaders to talk about the issues or before, when it's too late, they don't talk to them about it.

And so I'm glad to say that we do have in our interfaith based collaborative, we address mental health, substance use.

That is what the suicide numbers have resulted from because of what you've mentioned: their surroundings, their environment.

Unfortunately where they live and what they're seeing on every corner has caused that.

We're even seeing numbers as young as five year olds wanting to complete.

And it's, what you stated, the stress.

We're supposed to be able to come to our safe havens and our faith organizations, some of which we call even our preventative or places to share, to be able to be open to share.

And so that is what a part of many of the programs through what Detroit Wayne Integrated Health is doing with our faith-based collaborative.

- So I do wanna talk about that number that that I quoted as well.

That suicide is the third leading cause of death for African Americans ages 10 to 24.

I mean, we're just gonna pause a second, I think, and let that number soak in.

I didn't know, I didn't know that it was that high, but I wonder what each of you see with young people that is pushing them in that direction and where the points of intervention are to kind of stop that.

Reverend JB I'll start with you this time.

- Certainly, I see quite a few things.

I think the first thing is the focus on individualism.

Okay, you need to do this homework, you need to figure it out.

You need to handle your responsibilities.

And if you're stressed, you need to figure, you need to handle that too.

- Figure that out.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

- Exactly.

So one of the things that we do our best to support our students with is to just tell them to come as they are.

You may have a day where you're not feeling the best or you don't feel like being respectful, and even in that sense, you know, we encourage them to remember that there is grace, there is forgiveness, but also sometimes you just have to move through those emotions and get them out of your body.

And then additionally, I'm grateful that there have been some of our teens who have reached out on behalf of their friends.

My friend is feeling this.

She says she has a plan.

She's gonna go through with it.

What should I do?

Thank you for calling.

Here, make sure to call the emergency, make sure to call the hotlines, and let's move forward that way.

- So do you fear that this individualism, I guess, kind of verges into isolationism?

- Definitely.

- And you're trying to get them to see that they're part of, you know, a big community that.

- Yes.

- That has support and help for them.

- Exactly, and not only support, but also individuals who have gone through very similar experiences.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- We have a recent member who lost her baby who was born premature.

So it was a blessing to see Deacons, to see ministers come up to her and not only console her, but to share their story as well.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- Yes, I know it's tough, and no words that I can say will make a difference, but know that I am here by the grace of God and will be praying for you to hold on as well, yeah.

- Yeah, yeah, and Karra?

- Well, you mentioned the number earlier of the age.

And I mentioned a little bit younger as they're starting to, but there are so many, and I was so happy to hear Bishop mention many of the programs that are available to help mask or to address, try to be, to do that Youth Mental Health first aid type of work is what we are encouraging and bringing into our faith organizations so that we can have these conversations with our youth to let their voice be heard as well, to try to listen more intently because a lot of times as we get older, we don't want to hear what you've even mentioned.

You gotta do this.

You got this to plan to do, you have homework, you gotta do blah, blah, blah.

And then they go isolate, as you mentioned as well.

And social media has also been that connector or gateway or things that they see that they wanna try or think that's a test of, you know, let me try this out to see if I'm going to come back.

As opposed to it not, this reality is not them understanding that these things are affecting their mind, body, and spirit.

- Yeah.

- I too, in our church, have experienced a one youth that completed, and it was, it was, young child that was involved in everything.

Could quote scriptures and do, you know, it was just a, it was, it just kind of hit you like a brick.

And the youth that were around had to address and talk about it too.

- Sure.

- To address this issue to see how they were affected by that as well.

- Yeah, yeah, Bishop Chui?

- So I addressed this issue in detail the last quarter of 2024.

I did a class online for parents, for grandparents 'cause you can't really address the issue if you don't know what the root causes are.

- [Karra] Yes.

- But suicide among, particularly among Black boys has increased by 60%.

- [Stephen] Wow.

- Over the last 20 years.

And so for me, I wanna understand what's driving this?

- [Stephen] Yeah, right.

- So a good friend shared a book with me, and I highly recommend it to all parents, grandparents.

If you wanna understand what's really going on without you.

It's called "The Anxious Generation."

- [Stephen] Yes.

- By Jonathan Haidt, and he talks about how parenting has changed, how it's affected children, how smartphones and technology and social media have affected their psyche.

- Yes.

- So they're dealing with a lot of issues that kids didn't have to deal with before.

- [Karra] Yes.

- [Stephen] Right.

- You have a whole lot of negative information being fed to you 24 hours a day, 365.

They don't know what to do with this negative information.

Way too much screen time.

- [Karra] Way too much.

- And being exposed to a lot of negative feedback, and like you said, the cyber challenges.

Can you do this and survive, you know?

- Yes, yes.

- All that kind of foolishness.

And then you also have the lack of sleep.

- Absolutely, yeah.

- Huge lack of sleep.

- Oh my.

- Think about a child, if you're a kid growing up, you need sleep.

- You need sleep more than everyone else.

- For your physiological, mental and spiritual and emotional wellbeing.

You need sleep.

But kids today aren't getting enough sleep.

So my seminar, my class focused on trying to help parents understand these issues so that you can reduce the stress and anxiety and depression and all of these things that are coming at our youth today.

So providing parents with the resources, I think is really important to help drive down these numbers, right?

- [Stephen] Yeah, yeah.

- And to understand what's happening to their child.

- And understand why that, yeah.

Yeah, I do wanna talk about social media in particular, but before I get to that, I wanna talk about the pandemic, which I was having a conversation this week with a parent who had children who were small during the pandemic.

And now, you know, they're getting into those teenage years, and the things that they're seeing that they feel like are, you know, consequences of the things that our young people experienced during the pandemic are things that I don't remember seeing with my kids who are, you know, just a little older than that, right?

My kids were teenagers during the pandemic and there were effects, but the effects on small children, I think, are just now kind of rearing their heads and showing us what kind of problems we have.

Karra?

- Yeah.

- So I would, been looking at the same type of cases in a sense, to look at even from the babies who were born during Covid.

We were talking about how much older or ways that they are carry themselves or developing.

In this work, we see, we're trying to bring all of our messages, even the positive things that we're doing in the Detroit Wayne Integrated Health I'm referring to.

We have a network of providers that do place those positive types of messages, do their curriculums within it 'cause they had to do the schooling on the screen.

So we saw, you know, the parent having to become the teacher and having to go through those different phases, as you say, consequences that have not all been, some of us were not prepared to be the best teacher for our young.

- [Stephen] Sure.

- Babies up to two even, you know, throughout school.

So we've been trying programs to address life skills.

We do strengthening family type of programs.

So we bring in those, even through the social media, or I should say, utilizing that platform to try to turn it around, to embrace the family as a whole so that we can give those tools and talk about that within their homes or through, you know, but it is, it was so amazing that you brought that up about how the, these gadgets, as I call them, have attached to the children.

Even, I understand even those that we see that are on the spectrum.

- Yeah.

- That have to have these devices to help and maintain their mind, you know, their mentality.

But there are too of course, hopefully help engage them in a positive instead of seeing all of the.

- [Stephen] All the negative.

- Negative things.

- Yeah, yeah, Bishop Chui?

- So one thing I think we have to be aware of that Covid really set society in a different direction.

And because of all the downtime we had, we had to turn inward.

- [Karra] Yes.

- Right, and that raised a whole lot of issues.

- [Stephen] Yes.

- Concerns that have surfaced.

So now we have to treat mental health even more intentionally than we did in the past because we know those things are here.

They're above the surface now.

And family issues, inequalities, systemic issues, all of that came to the forefront.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- During Covid, so I don't think we're going back.

I'm saying that we need to really treat mental health as a regular part of our overall healthcare process.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And we can't go back because technology's gonna keep us.

- Right.

- Going ahead.

- Right.

- It's not going anywhere.

So we're gonna continue to have to work on human relationships and all the issues that are represented by those relationships.

So it's an ongoing process that we all need to engage in, no matter who we are as adults.

And if we can model that for our young people, then we'll be doing them the greatest service we could do.

- Yeah, yeah.

- To show 'em that it's okay.

- Reverend JB, you talked about this individualism that moves into isolationism.

And it strikes me that both Covid and social media play pretty important roles in that.

And the thing with social media that I think is really ironic is, you know, one minute a child or anybody can be interacting with lots and lots of people on their phone or their tablet or whatever device they have, but then instantly it's gone.

Like, when you put that down, then it's back to just you.

And I think that's part of the problem is that transition and making sense of what happened here on the screen by yourself, which you don't do if you're interacting with people in real life.

- Exactly or even if they're in the same room as you.

- [Stephen] Yes, right.

- Imagine you're on social media, or maybe even you're playing a video game.

Your friends are there, you have your earphones in, but then when the device goes off, you're alone.

So it's definitely been a big concern.

Not only the lack of community once the device is off, but also the comparison.

- [Stephen] Yes.

- Okay, you're doing this in your life, your body is shaped in this way, you know, that's very difficult.

And it's more comparison than before, but also our kids and our adults are becoming dopamine addicts.

- Yeah, yeah.

- You know, these hits of the colorful screens and all the different, yeah.

So many different things going on.

But I also wanna look at our society period, because I think it was a perfect storm of not only the social media and the devices and technology, the pandemic, but then also the structure of the family.

- [Stephen] Right.

- Many things were different where I remember growing up, and we would watch TV with our nana in her bedroom.

There was one TV in the house.

- Right, in the house.

- Exactly.

And then at my home, there were a couple more, but we did not have TVs in our own room.

So we had to communicate, we had to know, hey, my parents are gonna see this, so, you know, I can't watch something that isn't appropriate.

Additionally, there are a number of parents that have to work two jobs now.

- Yeah.

- So they can't have dinner with their children.

They may not even be there when the kids leave.

So now the kids feel as if they're adults.

Oh, well I take care of my smaller sibling.

I bought us McDonald's the other day, so you can't tell me what to do in class.

Imagine.

Even class has changed.

The last thing that's really concerning as well is it seems as if the pathway, the ways in which we would share wisdom generationally has broken down as well.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- We don't have the same multi-generation homes.

We don't have, new parents aren't familiar with moving in with the grandparents to say, oh no, I do need help.

All of a sudden they know everything.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And if they want to find something else, the information is online.

Of course, you can watch a YouTube, but how do you apply that knowledge?

So yeah, it's been, it's been very difficult.

But again, being able to gather, being able to say, okay, we don't want to change your entire life.

By all means you have your phones as we're driving down to Cedar Point or to the apple orchard.

But also there's gonna be a point in time where, hey, we ask a question, we have a conversation, we talk about new music.

Exactly, exactly where we interact.

Hey, let's share music.

Who wants to play the next song on the auxiliary?

- Right.

- So, yeah.

- Yeah, we've got just a little time left.

I wanna give each of you a chance to talk specifically about something you see that is hopeful here.

Something that you see as maybe a path forward.

Karra, I'll start with you.

- Oh, okay.

Yes, I think it's a lot of things that are hope, that is hopeful for us.

One of the annual events that, of course, I'll of course address that we do with the Wellness Beyond the Walls.

And why it is called and penned that was because inside of the buildings that had to transform for Covid, we had to hit the streets or be together in the, out inside of the community that we were not normally in.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- So we had to ride our bikes.

I think when some of the activities that you said, my family, as I have two children as well, we were able to play, learn how to play some card games, learn how to do, you know, do Scrabble or whatever.

We just came up with different ideas.

I think we even did many concerts in the basement from time to time and doing that as a musical family.

And that is part of the therapy too.

- Yeah, Bishop Chui?

- Thank you.

So I think that our solutions are in the same place that our issues are.

The technology affords us a lot of positive things as well.

But we have to learn how to redirect and to use the resources that are available.

Like you were talking about YouTube videos.

There are healing.

- [Stephen] Yes.

- Prayer, meditation, all of these things are at your fingertips.

So parents have to understand that they have resources that they could use to help their children.

- [Stephen] Sure.

- Right there on that tablet, on that cell phone.

But also they have to give them some guidelines and some instruction 'cause the device doesn't come with any instruction.

So you gotta set parameters so that your children can be more intentional about their use and interaction with social media.

- Yeah, yeah, Reverend JB?

- I am incredibly hopeful.

There's a lot of work to be done.

- Yeah.

- But by all means, we're doing our best, step by step, day by day.

First is decreasing the stigma.

We actually had a conversation during church service during our 11 o'clock service on September 17th, 2023.

It's still online, if you'd like to look it up on YouTube.

But we had a conversation with a mental health professional about depression and about suicide prevention.

So that was wonderful to start that conversation.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- To ask, who here has experienced suicidal ideation?

- Yeah, yeah.

- It was a powerful moment.

And then to close everything in prayer.

Also the kids are asking.

In our recent youth and teen Mental Health and Substance Abuse Prevention Summit, we had a packet of information.

We went through it quickly to let them know, hey, there are resources here, there are activities, there's all the above.

And one kid said, well, I wanted to spend a little bit more time in the booklet, like the day was fun.

And we got to know people and got nice bracelets and calm strips.

These small things that you can put on your phone or on your computer to kind of relax yourself.

But what more can we do?

So then the parents stepped up, the community partners stepped up.

Our parents said, hey, let's take this information from the Summit, and let's teach it in youth church.

Let's not only teach it in youth church, but let's have a deeper conversation during our small group, during Lent, and community partners simply seeing kids saying hello, asking about school or whatever.

- Right.

- We're no longer in the era of kids shouldn't be seen or heard.

- Right, right.

- So it's wonderful that everyone has a mindset of it's all, it's community wellness.

- Right.

- It's community wellness.

And me talking to you, me talking to everyone, it helps to boost my mental health.

- It's all part of the, yeah.

Okay, it was great to have all three of you here to talk about this and to talk about the hopeful things that you see.

Thanks for joining us.

- Amen.

- Thank you.

- It's been an honor.

- So that'll do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org, and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care.

And we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] From Delta faucets to Behr Paint, MASCO Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

MASCO, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Announcer] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(soothing tones)