HARLEM, Manhattan (PIX11) -- It's a difficult but important topic that often doesn't get spoken about. However, on Friday, some leaders in Congress were on hand at a Harlem forum to listen to advocates give voice to the need for Black men and boys to have access to mental health resources.
At a hearing at the National Action Network's Hall of Justice, three members of Congress heard about challenges that Black males face. The concerns raised at the hearing were similar to ones expressed by Black men and boys on the streets of Harlem.
"It's treated like punishment," said Reggie Pepard, a Harlem resident, when asked about mental health challenges in the Black community. "If somebody's in mental distress, you arrest him, put him in jail, he gets traumatized from prison, and comes out worse than he began," he said. "Why don't you help him in the beginning?"
Greg Richardson, another resident of Harlem, said that Black men and boys need to know what mental health resources are available and how to access them.
"You never have to do it alone, man," he said. "If you need help, get help. [You] never have to do anything alone, man."
That message was echoed by some of the panelists at the hearing.
It was convened by the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys, a congressional organization chaired by Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Democrat from Florida.
She and two other members of Congress, Lucy McBath and Hank Johnson, joined Rev. Al Sharpton, who'd invited the commission to convene the hearing away from Washington, D.C., where proceedings are usually held.
Marcus Smith was one of a handful of Black mental health advocates who were sworn in by Rep. Wilson, and testified.
Smith, a three-team NFL veteran who has founded a nonprofit, called Circle of "M," that secures treatment for mental health issues, talked about his own challenges.
"It started when I was 8 years old and I had my first anxiety attack, right," he said in an interview outside of the hearing. "But it's not something in our communities that we have a conversation about."
He and the other invited mental health advocates on the panel emphasized how important it is to make treatment and crisis prevention more accessible to the population that receives the least amount of help.
"Only 33% of Black adults with mental health conditions actually receive treatment," said Daniel Gillison Jr., the CEO of the National Alliance on Mental Illness during his testimony.
"So we're talking 66% that don’t," he said.
Also in attendance at the hearing were some teens who aspire to have careers as health care professionals. They were in the gallery listening, but did so with experiences of their own.
"The need I see is understanding," said Maxwell Bratcher, one of more than two dozen teens in the organization Young Doctors Project who were at the hearing. He spoke with PIX11 News outside of the session.
"A lot of people don't understand what we come from," he said, about young Black men and their mental health, "what we're trying to say, and what we're trying to do with each other."
Other advocates, like Bradley Nzinga, a program mentor at the Young Doctors Project, said that while Friday's hearing is important and can be beneficial for populations in need of more mental health resources, what's done in Washington, going forward, may have the greatest impact.
"It needs to be a step-by-step process," Nzinga said, "a process where we make changes, we realize that wasn't the best change, and then we readjust, until we get to something that's going to be equitable for everyone."
