How Two Fellows Are Doing Their Part to Fight Mental Health Stigma

By: Javacia Harris Bowser

Albert Schweitzer Fellow Glorian Vaughn has grappled with anxiety for much of her life. And she’s not alone. According to statistics shared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2023, one in five American adults experienced symptoms of anxiety and depression. 

But along the way Glorian has developed coping strategies that have helped her persevere. Her personal experience with anxiety inspired her to tackle issues of mental health for her Albert Schweitzer Fellowship project. Glorian has spearheaded a new initiative called “You Can Sit With Us” for 57 North Hampton, a nonprofit organization based in Huntsville that provides free counseling services to uninsured and underinsured individuals. She’s spent the past several months introducing Madison County residents to local businesses and exposing them to various activities and resources that could help them cope with their own bouts with depression and anxiety. 

“I’ve always struggled with anxiety but over time I’ve gained some tools with how to cope with it better,” Glorian says. “Because I struggle with it, I felt I would be able to understand where they’re coming from and also provide some kind of techniques or tips that I’ve learned along the way on how to cope with it.”

Over the past several months, Glorian has organized a host of events for 57 Hampton’s new initiative, including painting, exercise, and candle making classes and “Dinner with a Therapist” events. Through surveys administered before and after the events, Glorian seeks to track the impact these activities have on the mental well-being of participants. 

“The goals of those events are for me to provide them with some creative mental health coping strategies that they can incorporate into their daily lives,” Glorian explains. 

As a student at Samford University’s McWhorter School of Pharmacy who’s also pursuing a degree in the School of Public Health, Glorian has a lot on her plate. But she’s learned to manage the stress her busy schedule can sometimes spark.

“Instead of just trying to continue on even though I’m stressed out or having moments of anxiety, I take time for self-care,” she says. Her favorite self-care practices include her skincare routine, spending time with loved ones and playing softball. Practicing good breathing techniques and getting adequate amounts of sleep are essential too, she adds. 

Though national health statistics show a significant increase in anxiety and depression among adolescents and adults, Glorian believes the biggest shift is that people are speaking up. 

“I think it’s always been there but high school students may not have felt like they had somebody to go to so they would just struggle in silence,” she says. Many adults felt they had to keep quiet, too. 

“In different minority groups we’re also told that we don’t necessarily need to tell other people when we’re struggling,” Glorian says. 

Times are changing, but Glorian believes we still have a long way to go. 

“There’s still a stigma when we talk about mental health in the African American community,” she says, adding that some Black people struggling with depression and anxiety can feel ashamed to take medication or seek counseling.

“The stigma behind mental health in the Black community, for sure, was my ‘go ahead’ for this project,” she says. 

One community event at a time, Glorian is doing her part. 

When Jamal Rasheed was accepted into the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship he knew he wanted to use his project – and his education as a family and couples counseling student at the University of Montevallo —  to help Black youth from low income neighborhoods. 

“I’ve lived a more privileged life, but I had a lot of people in my life —  friends, families, acquaintances —  that did have to experience living in a lower income,” Jamal says.

“Hearing about their experiences ignited a fire in me about how can I best help them while respecting their experiences.”

After plans to work with incoming college students fell through, Jamal partnered with the RESTORE Juvenile Re-entry program in Birmingham. Through one-on-one and group counseling, Jamal is providing psychoeducation, emotion identification competency, and conflict resolution strategies to young men and women in the RESTORE program and for young people in juvenile detention centers.

The mental health stigma among adults in many communities of color, Jamal sees among young people, as well. 

“For the girls, I tell them that they don’t always have to hold it together,” Jamal says. “Black girls turning into Black women tend to feel like they have to hold it all together for everybody else, and that’s not necessarily the case. They can be weak sometimes.”

Jamal has a similar message for the Black boys in the program: “It’s okay to just not be okay,” he says he tells them. “You don’t have to put on this front of being angry.”

Jamal teaches the young people he works with that anger can usually be traced back to sadness but that there is also a wide range of emotions that they can feel at any given time. And that’s okay.

Though Jamal is still working on developing a formal assessment tool for his project – one that he wants to focus on empathy – he says he’s already noticing a difference.

“The youth in the detention center, they’ve seen a lot of growth,” he says. “The plans they have set for when they leave seem very promising. They are spending more time journaling and getting all the thoughts that they have out and then they’re able to navigate stressful situations better.”

Jamal, who hopes to one day own a community health clinic, believes changing the way a person thinks has the power to change that person’s life. 

“If I change the way you think, I can change the way you act and change the way you feel,” he says. “That’s basically the foundation of counseling to me.”