The Confess Undertaking advocates for the psychological well being of Black males throughout the U.S. by coaching barbers to hearken to and assist shoppers in disaster. Overcoming stigma and structural obstacles to psychological well being care within the Black group, its founder Lorenzo Lewis turns barbershops into group hubs the place psychological well being consciousness can flourish—through a community of 1,000 barbers in 40 cities, who in flip attain 1,000,000 shoppers per yr. Ashoka’s Yeleka Barrett caught up with Lorenzo to be taught extra.
Yeleka Barrett: Lorenzo, let’s begin with the inspiration behind the Confess Undertaking. What downside did you see?
Lorenzo Lewis
Lorenzo Lewis: To be trustworthy, as a Black man in America, I by no means felt seen or heard, not to mention celebrated. So that private expertise, shared by many different Black folks, was the very first thing to encourage me. Then there was my very own journey with psychological well being: despair, incarceration, having a brother with bipolar dysfunction, and figuring out associates that had PTSD from violence within the streets. Witnessing that violence impacted the way in which that I considered systemic inequality. Past that, I labored in behavioral well being for ten years. As a case supervisor at a hospital, I noticed largely white clinicians struggling to attach with Black sufferers.
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Barrett: I might think about that in lots of these settings, you have been the one Black individual on workers.
Lewis: Sure. There’s an actual scarcity of Black clinicians and docs within the psychological well being house. As a result of I’m not a health care provider, I didn’t diagnose and prescribe. However I did a variety of direct companies round care and remedy, which introduced me nearer to sufferers, and I noticed firsthand how impactful it may very well be for Black folks to obtain care from different Black folks.
Barrett: So now with the Confess Undertaking, persons are seeing what you noticed ten years in the past. You’ve now educated an intensive community of barbers to be psychological well being advocates. How do these barbers discover you?
Lewis: A lot of it’s phrase of mouth—a variety of barbers know that persons are struggling however don’t all the time know the place to show for assist. We give them instruments to deepen these interactions and intervene once they see somebody who is actually struggling or in danger. On prime of this, partnering with manufacturers and entertainers, from Gillette to Oprah and Killer Mike, has helped quite a bit. Now that we’re beginning up once more after Covid, we’ll be reaching out to Black ladies stylists to construct partnerships with magnificence manufacturers that assist ladies, and, by extension, younger Black kids.
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Barrett: And as soon as the barber or stylist is available in, how do you encourage them to turn into advocates?
Lorenzo onboarding and training new members.
Lewis: We’ve got a normal coaching that lasts an hour and focuses on 4 areas: energetic listening, validation, optimistic communication, and stigma discount. We have constructed this coaching with researchers at Harvard College, Georgia State College, and the Division of Behavioral Well being and Developmental Disabilities within the State of Georgia. We’re now working with state and federal businesses to make sure that this turns into evidence-based coaching. We wish folks to think about it like CPR: a needed and efficient intervention when somebody’s in a disaster.
Barrett: What’s a typical misunderstanding concerning the work you do?
Lewis: The Black group within the U.S. is essentially disconnected from what a psychological well being emergency seems like and the way their psychological well being can affect these round them. That’s as a result of it’s nonetheless stigmatized. I feel slavery is an enormous a part of how this unwillingness to speak our damage and challenges started. Take what I name “sluggish suicide”: somebody who’s abusing substances or who seeks out energetic violence as a result of they do not wish to dwell any longer. We wish to educate folks on the connections between despair and trauma—to elucidate that, for instance, gun violence is not only a rage and anger challenge, it is also a psychological well being challenge. We’re beginning a dialog.
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Barrett: Why is now a pivotal second for this work?
Lewis: We’re in an ongoing second of upheaval, proper? Persons are primed for change. I imply, ten years in the past, Black folks weren’t linked to this psychological well being dialog in any respect. No person ought to should die by the hands of the police, however between the police brutality, and the world shutting down with Covid, it was superb to see folks begin to discuss their psychological well being. And to see that there are dangerous insurance policies in place, in an extended historic context of inequity which have damage Black folks’s high quality of life. Persons are starting to comprehend that there is extra to life than simply surviving. I’ve gotten calls like, ‘man, I get it. I see what you guys have been doing. This makes a variety of sense.’
Barrett: Is there a enterprise case for the work that you just’re doing?
The Confess Undertaking has grown to incorporate 1,000 barbers throughout 40 states.
Lewis: Sure. First, we’re bolstering small companies. Our barbers are already self-employed entrepreneurs. Many barbers we have labored with went on to begin barber colleges due to the community we offered. And it helps them to maintain wealth of their households by proudly owning their retailers, which they move alongside to their kids. Second, we’re making a stronger workforce. Stress creates sickness within the physique, so when we’ve got extra folks which can be mentally wholesome, which have assets—which can be linked, we are going to see a distinction of their output. All of that impacts our economic system.
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Barrett: You shared a imaginative and prescient for a future by which the power to handle psychological well being crises turns into as reflexive as CPR. How else would possibly issues look completely different within the subsequent 5 to 10 years?
Lewis: We wish to lower youth suicide and suicide by males by 20%. Past that, care will turn into extra accessible. Whenever you stroll into one in every of our barber retailers, we’ve got posters up with assets that folks can name. And so it even begins to alter the way in which the world seems.
At current, the community reaches about 1,000,000 males and boys yearly.
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As we proceed to develop this, folks will see a distinction in society. Greater than something, I’m working towards a cultural change. We’re working with DJs at radio stations, and I do a weekly section on a neighborhood station in Georgia referred to as the Psychological Well being Second. So each Thursday for 3 minutes, I am speaking concerning the local weather of psychological well being in Black communities, and it’s performed on a Black radio station with majority Black viewers and listeners.
I feel that is what the Confess Undertaking actually does rather well: join with completely different cultural dynamics. It’s not simply celebrities. We have engaged with ex-gang members and introduced them contained in the barbershop. We introduced cops within barbershops to have conversations. This broad outreach to completely different varieties of individuals is actually key to making a group.
Lorenzo Lewis was named an Ashoka Fellow in 2022. You may learn extra about him and his concept right here.
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