This holiday season comes at the end of a most difficult year.

As Howard closes for winter break and the pandemic continues to devastate our country and inflict a disproportionate toll on the Black community, we all need to focus on our health, safety, and well-being during these next few months.

Today's guest is an expert in the field of mental health and will share his wisdom, insight, and perspective on what we can do during the holidays to stay well.

ANNOUNCER: Make the choice to begin anywhere in your life, and the journey has started.

And along the way, be inspired.

Listen to the stories by joining the president of Howard University, Dr. Wayne A.I.

Frederick, on "The Journey."

Hello, my name is Dr. Wayne Frederick, and my guest today on "The Journey" is Dr. Michael Barnes, the executive director of the Howard University Counseling Service.

Welcome, Dr. Barnes.

Good afternoon, and thank you, Dr. Frederick.

So thanks for joining us.

So I wanna first start by having our viewers and listeners learn a bit about you.

So you grew up in North Carolina.

What part of North Carolina did you grow up?

I grew up in a little town called Wilson, North Carolina.

It's about 45 miles east of the capital city of Raleigh.

All right, and tell me what your parents were like and what your very early education experience was like in Wilson.

Thank you, my parents were very loving parents.

They believed in education.

They both had high school educations, but they wanted to ensure, there were three of us, that all of us went to college, and we all did.

Were you the oldest, youngest, or the middle child?

I am the youngest of three siblings.

My oldest sister was in social work.

Unfortunately she passed from breast cancer.

I have a brother who is in management, and then I came along about 10 years after they did.

Oh, so you were really the baby brother, as they say?

Yes.

So you obviously got into high school, and you decided to attend University of North Carolina.

What was your decision-making process like in terms of going into the field of psychology?

Well, my decision to go into psychology really came from my family experience.

I have a maternal uncle who was at that time we called mildly mentally retarded.

Nowadays, it's appropriately called intellectual disability.

And my parents were responsible for taking care of him, like many African-American families do, they take of their families.

And I was fascinated by him and fascinated and wondering how he begat that way and what could be done about it.

And so that kind of put me on a path toward mental health and psychology.

And what was your experience at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill like?

Attending a school at that period of time in our nation's history, I would imagine it wasn't a very diverse campus, but what was your experience like?

It was getting to be a diverse campus.

It definitely wasn't a very diverse campus, and I was the child who had the opportunity to go to a predominantly white institution.

My brother and sister went to HBCUs, and because I came along later, I was able to go there.

My experience there, though, was enhanced and really made wonderful by the fact that I had two Black psychology professionals, and they were the ones who steered me to go further and pursue this thing called psychology.

And who would those two, who were those two professionals?

We had Dr. Bernadette Gray-Little and Dr. William Anderson, and they had classes that spoke about psychology as the Black experience, that the experience that one has often influences behaviors ways of thinking, ways of reacting.

And we learned about Dr. Max Meenes, Dr. Francis Sumner, and of course, Dr. Kenneth and Mamie Clark and the doll studies.

And I knew, I knew then, Howard, I had to call on Howard University.

And you came to Howard, did your doctorate.

I would imagine that was a very unusual experience, especially juxtaposing that against your University of North Carolina experience.

What was that experience like when you got to Howard?

Absolutely eye-opening.

As the kids say, I got woke, (laughs) and I had a plethora of African American professors, professors who were involved in professional activities.

That I didn't see in North Carolina, and I was certainly inspired by it and the experience at Howard University.

Now, you mentioned Drs.

Clark.

Let's spend a little time talking about Black psychology and that doll study because we have some younger listeners who may not be familiar with that.

Why don't you tell our audience a bit about that?

Well, essentially, Dr. Clark had dolls and had Black children choose which doll was more appropriate, which doll was, quote, better, and Black children were choosing white dolls.

And that information, that research went on to help with the Board of Education Supreme Court case and other kinds of cases.

And it taught us that our self-esteem had been banished and had been punished and that we needed to take impact and look into that.

And that desegregation of our education system in that case, the Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas versus the Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas was a landmark case that desegregated our schools as a result of, and some of the evidence was that psychology.

So we come into this year now, and as we have tried to do things to obviously open up our educational system, we're bringing young people to Howard's campus to provide them with an opportunity, and then you're hit by a pandemic.

And in many ways, that socialization that brings their confidence to the forefront, really empowers them to go on to do great things is robbed from them almost because of this pandemic.

What are some of the effects you're seeing on their mental health as a result?

Well, I think one of the largest effects of the pandemic on the mental health of our students and other people, just depression.

Depression is a major one because depression deals with a lot of loss, and the pandemic has augmented the loss.

It has augmented and short-circuited our traditions.

We've lost loved ones.

We have traditions when we go home that we cannot continue.

We can't bring all of the family in and reunite.

We like to gather.

We like to socialize.

We like to remember.

We like to talk about the future.

That now presents a danger to most people.

I can think of an example where growing up in North Carolina, we had a teacher who was a community leader, a favorite teacher who followed us through college, graduate school, became elderly, had to go to a rest home.

And the friends that he mentored and taught visited him.

We him in a nursing home, and we visited up until the pandemic struck.

When the pandemic struck, we could no longer visit.

And unfortunately his mental health deteriorated, and he just kind of passed away, and we felt guilty about it.

So that's another form of depression.

Yeah, I'm sorry to hear about it, and it's a good example of all of the traditions, the customs, the things that keep us going on a daily basis, that sometimes fuel us with joy, we don't get to participate in, so I think you make a very good point about that.

There's anxiety as well, because students are now learning in a very different platform.

You've got faculty members who have daycare needs, so they're at home homeschooling while trying to provide an education to our students.

You have students who are at home with multiple family members who are all at home trying to use the same wireless system, et cetera.

Same thing happens with me.

I have a 16 year-old-son who's a junior and a 14-year-old daughter who is a sophomore.

They now are going to class on alternate days, but for the longest while, for months they basically have been at home.

And so I've seen it, and I've seen the pressure on them.

How much is that anxiety now becoming a problem?

It's a significant problem.

It's a major problem.

Sort of like with depression, whenever you have that, you will also have some aspect of anxiety.

They're kind of like siblings, and we've understood and heard that students are just extraordinarily anxious about not being on the campus, not being able to access their academics in the traditional way, the way that they're used to, their siblings have taught them, the mother and father who've gone here and said, "This is what we did."

And they're feeling extremely anxious about those kinds of things.

And we also have the anxiety from the home environment, as you mentioned, that there are multiple people sometimes in the home who have to vie for the internet use, and our students have to make a plea for how important their work is compared to a sibling, but all of their work is important.

So all of these things kind of bring anxiety.

And I guess that that can leave deep scars.

It can leave deep psychological scars from the trauma that is experienced, especially that trauma that some students may be experiencing at home.

Some of them have home insecurity, food insecurity, or they're living in circumstances in which the tension between them and their parents because of lifestyle choices, and those other things may be, you know, really coming to a head.

What is that trauma like?

It's very significant, and it's very impactful.

One of the things we've talked about here at the university is, quote, living in a toxic environment.

Why we've done that is because that's the feedback that we've gotten from our students here.

They call, they tell us that it's very difficult because of lifestyle changes because of, you know, what they've chosen to do.

And so that can be a very impactful thing in terms of when you're trying to study, negatively impactful when you're trying to study at home.

Yeah, and then obviously there's quite a plethora of problems that we have to deal with.

Most counseling centers across the country at our universities are under significant pressure to add counselors, to add more services.

And then obviously with the pandemic, you can't meet with that counselor on campus anymore.

You're now back home unexpectedly, and you have to set up a different arrangement.

What has it been like for the counseling center to ramp up services and to really try to meet the ever-growing demand for your services?

It's been made easy, at least in part, by the Howard University administration.

We were able to get equipment so that we could do virtual work from our homes, computers, et cetera.

And so now we switched from an in-person environment to a total virtual world where we work with our students through Microsoft Teams, through Zoom.

And those are perfectly safe and confidential venues that we can continue to work with our students.

Have you seen an increased utilization of your services as you think some of the items you mentioned before, depression, anxiety, the trauma is taking hold.

Are you seeing more and more students signing up for your services?

We are indeed seeing exponential growth in the use of our services at the counseling service.

We've had phone calls.

We've now made that open.

We've sorta rearranged the way we do our intake so people can call and set up an appointment.

We have opened an email address that people can write into us, and we have outreach where people can contact us through our social media handles, which we did not have before.

We're on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter.

Okay, so you're contemporary now, better than my services with respect to social media.

But when you look at some of the root causes and trying to connect with students on that platform, how effective is it versus meeting with them in person?

And I pose this question, for the sake of full transparency, because of my own experience.

My 14-year-old daughter who is very social, loves to engage, is very active at school had a very difficult time in the spring, and so we had her see a psychologist, and it was all done virtually.

And I remember sitting there with her for the first appointment, and it was awkward.

It seemed a bit awkward.

You don't have those dynamics of looking at the nonverbal cues, you know, and then she went on to see her by herself, did it very well, and also got referred to see a psychiatrist who she's still seeing in that virtual platform, and now she's extremely comfortable with it.

But how difficult is it to really get comfortable in that situation?

Well, at first, it is sort of unusual.

It's new.

It's novel.

So anything new and novel presents a little bit of anxiety and getting used to, but I think once we got started and once our students got used to the concept of it, most were able to come about as you've described the experience with your daughter.

It takes repetition, and it also takes the skill of the therapist.

So we at the counseling service have been trained in working on a virtual platform in doing therapy.

We've all had to, I required everyone to do some mandatory CEUs, intro to virtual therapy sort of, so to speak, as sponsored by the American Psychological Association, so that helped quite a bit.

Now, clinical psychologists are licensed in different jurisdictions, and how did you overcome that issue?

I know early on, there was some movement to try to allow, by the federal government intervention, trying to allow therapists to continue to see students that may have moved abruptly to other states.

Was that effective, and what is the current circumstance for, for instance, continuing care for a student who may have returned home to Georgia, for instance?

So Dr. Frederick, we're still struggling with the jurisdictional issues.

When the pandemic first heightened, or blew up, so to speak, around spring break in March, many of the states made exemptions for several months so that if you were a bona fide licensed professional, you could practice across state lines or jurisdictions.

No one imagined that this would go on this long.

So many of the states have closed down those jurisdictional exceptions, and so now practitioners have to become licensed in other states, which is a great expense and creates an additional liability, At the counseling service, one of the things we've done, many of our students have Howard University insurance, so where we are not able to gain licensure or an extension in states, we will refer them to the Howard University insurance called HealthiestYou aspect, and it's free, and they can get services there as well.

Okay, and again, I would assume that the volume of that is increasing.

Do you have concerns that since you are not part of the intake and intervention, do you have concerns about your ability to get information, obviously respecting HIPAA?

But as part of helping the students, one of the things that you do provide is a holistic approach, looking at their academics and making sure that we can support them through the academics.

Is that proving to be a barrier when they see other professionals outside of the counseling center?

So we're in a very fortunate position that the majority of students contact us first.

Our social media, our advertisements encourage students to talk to us first.

So we typically do the intake.

We typically do the consultation, whether they're in Hawaii, Alaska, Georgia or wherever, and then gather information and let them know how we're going to be able to assist them.

But the main portion is to get them help.

Right.

So we are able to kind of prepare them if we have to make referrals.

Now, sometimes they kind of escape the difficult reality that we're in.

Some students may turn to, you know, illicit drug use.

Are you seeing an increase in substance abuse as well?

Well, we're certainly getting calls and intakes where substance abuse is an issue, but I'm not sure that it's a significant increase.

We are getting an increase because during the holidays, particularly this time of year, students want to celebrate.

They want to relieve stress.

They're finished with exams, they've been finished with a just very rigorous semester.

And so, you know, imbibing and substances and drinking can become a problem.

And sometimes they can encounter some troubles with it, and they always come to us and we're glad to help them.

So let's talk about some intervention, some solutions to these very, very daunting issues.

What are some of the things you're encouraging students to do to keep their mental health healthy?

In my 14-year-old daughter's circumstance, as she got to go back out to school, it significantly impacted her positively.

And as she got to start playing volleyball and getting involved there, she also felt, you could see, significantly better as well.

Everyone doesn't have that opportunity.

And our students aren't back for in-person instruction, and you know, what may be available to them at their homes or in their neighborhoods, may not be such that they can interact even with social distancing and masks.

So what are some of the things that you're advising students to do?

So let me just start with our newly implemented outreach program.

And we are just working very arduously on this platform because it's a way to reach so many of our students where we can talk about things that they may not talk about such as anxiety, depression, tension, living in toxic environments, how to manage taking tests from distant learning and so forth.

So we put that out there, and students can access them even through recordings.

But generally, the first thing we would say is for students and persons in general to acknowledge what you're experiencing, to accept, to say that this is happening to me.

Denial is not a good thing.

And next to talk to it about to someone, to take it out of yourself and talk to a friend or whomever, and they can often give you feedback.

And third, I would say take positive, healthy action steps.

Those are some of the things that we would just begin to say, it's sort of the first step in working with some of the problems that you have.

Right.

There are other kinds of specific things that we could do as well.

And we say mindfulness is a specific kind of thing, and that's being in the moment.

It's kind of like acknowledging things that are happening to you and not focusing on the past or the future and awfulizing, but being in the moment.

Right, now, some of the things that are occurring as well with young people is that they also are going through a period of self-actualization as they become young adults, and that does have a very social component to it that's lost.

What do you anticipate we're gonna be faced with as a nation, as a university, but even as a nation in terms of trying to get students back into that, some normalcy of that circumstance of being able to interact, deal with conflict, you know, be supportive of others?

That's one of the ways we learn to become resilient.

Do you think that some of those key traits that, and key interventions that students may develop to cope may be lost?

Well, we certainly hope not.

We certainly hope that they won't be lost, and that's why we're doing a campaign even when we're away from campus about encouraging, supporting, tapping into our values, our morals, building upon our history of strength and the examples that we've had before us and how we've, quote, overcome and that when we get back, we hope that students can build on those kinds of concepts and interventions.

We will certainly have to do preparation for students to come back to our campus and to be on campus, sort of like a re-initiation to being on campus.

Hmm, you know, Dr. Barnes, it's been a pleasure having you.

I also wanna take the opportunity to thank you for the great work that you've been doing.

Every Howard alum who comes on this show is posed with this final question.

Why Howard?

Oh, my goodness.

Why Howard University?

Again, as I mentioned, that I learned about some of the greats who were there, and it dawned upon me that I could be a vessel to help my people, and that's what I've dedicated my work history and my life to date of doing.

And I get great joy and great pleasure out of doing that, and Howard has been the vessel, the place which all of this knowledge, the experience has just come together and poured into me.

And so, as we often say from the counseling service, you can't pour from a empty cup.

Howard is the cup filler.

Ah, excellent, thank you very much again for all that you're doing.

Thanks for being here.

My guest today was Dr. Michael Barnes, the executive director of the Howard University Counseling Service.

I'm Dr. Wayne Frederick.

Please join me next time on "The Journey."

(calm music) ANNOUNCER: This program was produced by WHUT Howard University Television and made possible by contributions from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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