Part 1 of our Minority Mental Health Awareness Month series

Every July, we mark Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month. Congress formally recognized it in 2008, naming it for the author and advocate who spent her life pushing to end mental health stigma in communities of color before she passed away in 2006. Nearly two decades later, the reason she fought still holds. For many of us, mental health is the weight we carry but don't talk about.

If you grew up in a household where struggle was met with "pray about it," "we don't air our business," or "other people have it worse," you already know this silence. It isn't cruelty. Often it's the opposite, a form of protection passed down by people who survived real hardship the only way they knew how. But protection that depends on silence has a cost, and that cost usually lands on the next generation.

Where the silence comes from

Stigma around mental health doesn't appear out of nowhere. In many minority communities, it's woven from history, survival, and love in complicated ways.

For families shaped by migration, war, poverty, or discrimination, endurance was a necessity. When your energy goes toward keeping a family safe and fed, sitting with your feelings can feel like a luxury you were never allowed. "Being strong" became the family value, and admitting you were struggling could feel like betraying everyone who sacrificed for you.

There's also a real, earned distrust of medical and mental health systems. Communities of color have historically been misdiagnosed, over-diagnosed, dismissed, or mistreated by the very institutions meant to help. Research consistently shows that people of color are more likely to be misdiagnosed and less likely to receive appropriate treatment. When the system has failed your people before, keeping your struggles private can feel safer than trusting it again.

The stories we tell ourselves

Silence gets reinforced by the stories our cultures hand us about who we're supposed to be.

There's the "strong Black woman," expected to hold everyone together and never crack. There's the "model minority" myth that tells Asian American families that success should look effortless, so admitting anxiety or depression feels like admitting failure. There's the expectation in many Latino and immigrant households that you owe it to your parents to be okay, because they gave up so much for you to have this life. And across many communities, there's the message to men that feelings are weakness.

Each of these stories contains a kind of love or pride. But each one also leaves people alone with pain they can't name out loud. And what we can't name, we can't heal.

What silence actually costs

The numbers tell the story the silence hides. According to national data, roughly 43% of Black adults and 47% of Hispanic adults try to manage mental health challenges on their own rather than seeing a professional, compared with about 35% of white adults. Among Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, only about one in four people experiencing mental health struggles receives treatment.

These aren't signs that our communities feel less pain. They're signs that we've been taught to carry it quietly. And carried long enough, that weight shows up anyway, as exhaustion, short tempers, physical illness, strained relationships, and pain quietly handed down to children who learn that this is simply how you cope.

Breaking the pattern, gently

Breaking generational silence doesn't require a dramatic confrontation or rejecting where you come from. It can start small and stay respectful of the people who raised you.

It can look like naming your own feelings honestly, even if only to yourself at first. It can look like choosing different words with your kids, "It's okay to feel sad, let's talk about it" instead of "stop crying." It can look like letting one trusted person see the real you. And it can look like recognizing that the elders who taught you to stay strong did the best they could with what they had, and that you're allowed to do it differently.

Taking care of your mind isn't a betrayal of your culture or your family. In many ways, it's the most loving thing you can do for both, because healing, like silence, gets passed down too.

This month, the invitation is simple: notice the weight you've been taught not to mention. You don't have to set it down all at once. You just have to admit it's there.

Next in the series: once we're ready to seek help, why is it still so hard to find care that actually understands us? We'll look at the real barriers and how to get around them.

Lartey Wellness shares educational content to support your mental and physical wellbeing. It is not a substitute for professional care. If you're struggling, you're not alone, and reaching out is a sign of strength, not weakness. In a crisis, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

You noticed the distance. You thought about your part in it. Maybe you softened your tone, stopped bringing up the old argument, started asking how their day went and actually listening. Maybe you apologized, really apologized, not the quick kind. You changed something real about how you were showing up.

And it didn't work.

The distance is still there. Or the warmth you were hoping to feel back never came. And now you're sitting with a particular kind of ache: not just the original hurt, but the disappointment of having tried, quietly and sincerely, and having it go unmet.

If that's where you are, this is for you.

Two hurts, not one

It helps to name what you're actually carrying, because it's usually more than it looks like from the outside.

There's the first thing, whatever created the distance in the first place. And then there's a second thing sitting on top of it: you reached, and the reach wasn't returned. That second hurt is real, and it's often the heavier one. Effort that goes unanswered can feel more exposing than the original problem, because you let yourself hope out loud, even if only to yourself.

So before anything else: the fact that it didn't work is not evidence that you did it wrong.

Why one person can't finish a repair alone

Here's something that gets lost in a lot of advice about relationships. You can change the temperature of a relationship on your own, but you can't complete a repair on your own.

One person can lower their defenses. One person can stop a bad pattern from their side. One person can create an opening. But repair, the actual mending, is something two people do in the same direction at the same time. It needs the other person to notice the opening and step toward it.

That means when a solo repair doesn't work, it's often not a verdict on your effort. It's a sign that repair was asking for something one person structurally can't provide by themselves. You can hold a door open. You can't also walk the other person through it.

What "it didn't work" might actually mean

When a reach goes unmet, the mind tends to jump straight to the worst reading: they don't care, or I'm not worth the effort. Sometimes there's a gentler and more accurate explanation. A few possibilities, not to diagnose your situation but to loosen the grip of that first harsh story:

• They didn't see it. People miss quiet change, especially when they're braced for conflict. The shift that felt enormous to you may not have registered.

• They weren't ready. Readiness isn't something you can schedule for someone else. Your timing and theirs don't always line up.

• They're protecting themselves. Sometimes not responding to a repair is someone guarding a hurt they haven't worked out yet, less a rejection of you than a wall around them.

• Something has genuinely changed. And sometimes the lack of response is telling you something true about where the relationship is. That's allowed to be part of the picture too.

You don't have to pick which one it is right now. You just don't have to assume it's the cruelest one.

Small things to do next

Not a to-do list. Just a few gentle options, any one of which is enough on its own.

Let the disappointment be real before you decide anything. There's a strong pull to leap straight to a conclusion, either fix it harder or give up entirely. Neither has to happen today. Feeling let down is not the same as making a decision, and you're allowed to sit in the first without rushing to the second.

Get specific about what you were actually hoping for. "I wanted things to be better" is hard to work with. "I wanted them to ask me how I was doing" or "I wanted to stop feeling like a roommate" is something you can name, and eventually something you can say out loud.

Consider moving it from solo to shared, if it feels safe to. So far this has been happening inside you. There can be a quiet power in naming it plainly to the other person: I've been trying to close the distance between us, and I don't know if you've noticed. That's not an accusation. It's an invitation to make the repair a two-person effort instead of a one-person one. Only you know if that's safe and wanted.

Let a third person hold some of it. Some ruptures are hard to mend with just the two people who are inside them, precisely because you're both too close to it. A neutral, caring third space, whether that's support for the two of you together or support just for you, can do what solo effort can't: help both directions move at once, or help you find your footing regardless of what the other person does. [Placeholder: name Lartey Wellness's relevant offering here, e.g., couples support / individual counseling, and how someone starts.]

The harder possibility, held gently

Sometimes a repair that doesn't work is the beginning of a joint effort that eventually does. And sometimes it's the beginning of accepting that a relationship has changed shape, or run its course. Both of those are real outcomes, and it isn't our place, or anyone's from the outside, to tell you which one you're in.

What we can say is this: your worth was never riding on whether that one reach was returned. You extended care into a hard place. That says something good about you no matter how it landed.

You don't have to know the ending yet. You just have to take the next small, kind step, toward them or toward yourself.

If you're carrying this and want somewhere to bring it, [Placeholder: Lartey Wellness, one-line description of relevant support + how to reach out / link to intake form]. You don't need to have it figured out first. That's what the support is for.

This post is for general educational purposes and isn't a substitute for professional mental health or relationship care. If you're in distress or your safety feels at risk, please reach out to a qualified professional or a local crisis line. [Placeholder: region-appropriate crisis resource if desired.]

For a lot of families, summer arrives like a held breath finally released. No more early alarms, packed lunches, or homework standoffs at the kitchen table. And for kids, the promise of long, open days can feel like freedom.

But somewhere around the second or third week, many parents notice a shift. The kid who seemed thrilled to be done with school is suddenly restless, irritable, glued to a screen, or melting down over things that never used to be a problem. Bedtimes drift later. Mornings get foggy. The mood in the house changes in ways that are hard to name.

If that sounds familiar, you're not imagining it, and your child isn't doing anything wrong. A big part of what's happening is simple: when summer starts, kids lose the structure they'd been leaning on all year, often without anyone realizing how much it was holding them up.

The quiet work that school structure was doing

We tend to think of the school day in terms of academics. But for kids, the schedule itself does an enormous amount of invisible work.

A typical school day gives a child a predictable rhythm: a time to wake up, a reason to get dressed, a sequence of activities, built-in social contact, regular meals, and a clear endpoint. None of that is dramatic, but it adds up to a kind of scaffolding. Kids know what's coming next, and that predictability is genuinely regulating for a developing brain. It lowers the background hum of "what am I supposed to be doing?" and frees up energy for everything else.

School also quietly delivers things that have nothing to do with grades: a daily dose of friends, the steady presence of trusted adults, movement, and a sense of purpose that comes from showing up somewhere and being part of something.

When the school year ends, all of that comes down at once. And while some kids glide into the open space happily, plenty of others feel the floor drop out a little. The structure that was doing so much for them is simply gone, and ten weeks of unstructured time can feel less like a vacation and more like drifting.

What "losing structure" can actually look like

The hard part is that kids rarely say "I miss my routine." It tends to show up sideways, in behavior and mood rather than words. Parents often notice some mix of:

• More conflict, shorter fuses, and bigger reactions to small frustrations

• Sleep that slides further off track week by week

• Long stretches of screens, followed by boredom and listlessness

• Trouble getting going in the morning, or a kind of aimless, "I don't know what to do" feeling

• More anxiety or low mood, especially for kids who already tend that way

• Fewer chances to see friends, leading to a creeping sense of isolation

It's worth saying plainly: this is normal, and it isn't a parenting failure. The dip many kids feel in summer is a predictable response to a real change, not a sign that something is broken in your home or your child.

Structure isn't the same as a packed calendar

When parents hear that kids need structure, the natural reaction is to feel like they should be filling every hour with camps, activities, and enrichment. That pressure is real, and it can be exhausting and expensive, and it often isn't what kids need anyway.

Structure doesn't mean busyness. It means a little reliable rhythm: a few anchor points kids can count on, and a sense that the days have some shape. That can be as simple as a consistent wake-up window, one thing to look forward to, and a steady relationship or two outside the house.

The goal isn't to recreate school. It's to give kids enough of a framework that they don't have to navigate ten unstructured weeks entirely on their own, while still leaving room for the rest, play, and downtime that summer is actually good for.

Where mentorship fits in

This is part of why we built our summer mentorship program here at Lartey Wellness, and why we think it's worth a look if any of this resonates.

What kids lose in summer isn't just a schedule. It's the combination of rhythm and relationship — a regular touchpoint with someone who's genuinely in their corner. Mentorship is one of the most natural ways to offer both at once.

A mentor gives a child a consistent, low-pressure point in the week to count on, the kind of reliable anchor that makes the open days feel less shapeless. And just as importantly, it gives them a caring adult outside the family who shows up, listens, and takes an interest in who they are. That relationship can be a real source of steadiness, especially for kids who are feeling a little adrift, a little isolated, or just quietly out of sorts.

Our program is designed to feel like the good parts of summer, not a second school year:

• A consistent, dependable rhythm that gives the week some welcome shape

• A trusted mentor who builds a real relationship over time, at the child's pace

• Connection and belonging outside the home and the screen

• A space to grow through conversation, activity, and encouragement, with no pressure to perform

Reaching out for this kind of support isn't a last resort, and it doesn't mean anything has gone wrong. Plenty of thriving kids do beautifully with a little extra structure and a caring adult in their corner over the summer. Choosing to give your child that is a strength, not a fallback.

A gentle note for parents

If the changes you're seeing in your child feel bigger than a summer slump — persistent sadness, anxiety that's getting in the way of daily life, withdrawal from things they love, or anything that worries you — it's always okay to reach out for professional support. You don't have to wait until things reach a crisis point, and you don't have to figure it out alone.

If you'd like to learn more about our summer mentorship program, or just talk through what your child might need this season, [we'd love to hear from you / add contact or link]. Sometimes the most helpful thing isn't a fuller calendar. It's one steady, caring connection that helps the summer feel a little less unmoored.

You’re halfway through a normal day. The dishwasher is running, someone’s talking to you, your phone keeps buzzing, and the light overhead is just a little too bright. Then someone asks one small, ordinary question and you snap. The reaction is bigger than the moment deserves, and you know it even as it’s happening. Afterward comes the familiar guilt: Why do I get angry so fast? What is wrong with me?

If that sounds familiar, here’s the first thing worth saying clearly. It probably isn’t a character flaw. For a lot of adults, that short fuse isn’t really about patience or temper at all. It’s about how much your nervous system is already carrying before the “last straw” ever arrives. And one of the most common, most overlooked sources of that hidden load is sensory overload.

What sensory overload actually is

Your brain is taking in an enormous amount of information at every moment. Sound, light, movement, touch, temperature, smell, plus everything you’re thinking about and tracking. Most of the time it filters the unimportant stuff into the background so you can function.

Sensory overload happens when the incoming input outpaces your brain’s ability to filter and process it. The signals stop fading into the background and start competing for your attention all at once. It can feel like the volume on everything has been turned up. The hum of the fridge, the tag on your shirt, the group chat, the person chewing nearby, and you can’t turn any of it down.

This isn’t rare or unusual. Everyone has a threshold. But that threshold sits lower, or gets crossed more easily, for people living with anxiety, ADHD, autism, sensory processing differences, chronic stress, trauma histories, migraines, or even just a stretch of poor sleep. If you’ve ever felt “too sensitive” to noise or crowds or busyness, you’re describing something real and physical, not an overreaction.

Why overload turns into irritability

Here’s the part that explains the anger.

Regulating your emotions takes energy. Staying patient, pausing before you react, choosing your words. It’s run by the same brain systems that handle focus, decision-making, and impulse control, and those systems have a limited budget. Every bit of sensory input you’re processing draws from that same budget.

When sensory load climbs, your nervous system starts shifting toward a stress response, the fight-or-flight gear. In that state, your body is primed to react fast and defend itself, which is great if there’s a genuine threat and terrible for sitting calmly through a minor annoyance. Meanwhile, the thinking part of your brain that would normally help you stay measured has fewer resources left to do its job.

So the same comment that wouldn’t faze you on a quiet, rested morning becomes unbearable at 5 p.m. in a loud kitchen. The anger isn’t coming out of nowhere. It’s coming out of a system that was already running near capacity, and irritability is often the first thing to spill over the edge.

Therapists sometimes describe this as your “window of tolerance,” the zone where you can handle what life throws at you and stay regulated. Sensory overload narrows that window. The more crowded and noisy your environment (and your day) gets, the smaller the window becomes, and the less it takes to push you out of it.

Why it feels so sudden

One of the most confusing parts is the speed. It really can feel like you go from fine to furious in a second.

But the buildup is usually invisible. Sensory load accumulates quietly over hours, and you don’t notice each individual input stacking up. What you notice is the moment the bucket overflows. The trigger that “caused” the outburst is rarely the real cause. It’s just the drop that happened to be last. That’s why the reaction feels out of proportion to you and to everyone around you. The proportion was never about that one thing.

Common triggers adults underestimate

A lot of modern adult life is quietly sensory-heavy. Some usual suspects:

• Open-plan offices, background music, and constant notifications

• Long commutes and crowded transit or stores

• Screens running all day, plus group chats and back-to-back calls

• Parenting young kids, with noise, touch, and constant demands all at once (the “touched out” feeling is real)

• Bright or flickering lighting, especially fluorescents

• Trying to do several things at the same time

• Hunger, thirst, and exhaustion stacked on top of all of it

None of these is dramatic on its own. That’s exactly why they’re easy to miss, and why the irritability seems to appear without a clear reason.

What actually helps

The goal isn’t to never feel irritable. It’s to stop running so close to your limit that small things tip you over.

Lower the input before you’re maxed out. Noise-canceling headphones, dimming the lights, closing extra tabs, silencing non-urgent notifications, doing one thing at a time. Small reductions add up because they free up that limited regulation budget.

Learn your early warning signs. Most people have physical tells before the snap, like a clenched jaw, tight shoulders, shallow breathing, or a feeling of everything closing in. Catching those is your cue to change something before you reach the edge, not after.

Build in recovery. Quiet, low-stimulation breaks aren’t a luxury. They’re how your system resets. Even a few minutes alone in a calm space between demands can widen your window again.

Regulate in the moment. Slow, deliberate breathing is one of the fastest ways to signal safety to your nervous system and step back from fight-or-flight. If you’d like a simple, guided way to practice, we built a free box breathing exercise you can use anytime you feel the pressure rising.

Tend to the basics. Sleep, food, and hydration sound boring, but they directly affect how much sensory load you can absorb before tipping over. A tired, hungry brain has almost no margin.

When it’s worth talking to someone

Occasional irritability is human. But if you find that snapping is straining your relationships, leaving you ashamed, or showing up most days no matter what you try, that’s a sign worth taking seriously, not a verdict on who you are.

Persistent sensory sensitivity and a short fuse can be tied to things like anxiety, ADHD, autism, or the lingering effects of stress and trauma, all of which are very workable with the right support. A therapist can help you map your specific triggers, understand what your nervous system is responding to, and build tools that actually fit your life.

At Lartey Wellness Group, our clinicians work with adults navigating exactly this: the overwhelm, the guilt, and the question of why do I react this way? If you’re in Maryland or one of the other states we serve, reaching out is a low-pressure first step toward feeling more like yourself again.

You’re not broken, and you’re not just “an angry person.” You may simply be carrying more than your system can quietly hold, and that’s something you can learn to change.

The other day, I was watching my 17-year-old daughter navigate a rough week. She had some typical teenage friendship drama and was just feeling completely overwhelmed. Instead of retreating to her room to suffer in silence, she walked into my office, and said, “Mom, I’m feeling really anxious and just need to talk it out.” 

As we sat there tracing her feelings, a wave of bittersweet emotion hit me. I was incredibly proud of the emotionally intelligent young woman she’s becoming. But another part of me, the 17-year-old version of myself, felt a quiet ache. 

Man, I wish I had those opportunities when I was her age. 

The "Figure It Out Yourself" Generation 

Did anyone else grow up as a Gen-X kid and realize later that some of the things we survived probably shouldn't be considered actual parenting strategies? 

As a 45-year-old mom and, coincidentally, a practicing therapist, I often reflect on how wildly different childhood looked in the 70s and 80s. We were the definitive "figure it out yourself" generation. We drank metallic-tasting water from the garden hose, stayed outside unsupervised until the streetlights came on, and learned very early on that emotions were something to push down rather than talk about. 

While there are things I genuinely cherish about growing up Gen X, our fierce independence, our playground resilience, and our latchkey creativity, there are also a lot of things I consciously chose not to repeat when I had my daughter. 

In our day, emotional struggles were often dismissed as simply being "too sensitive." Mental health wasn't a kitchen-table discussion; it was a taboo. Many of us were expected to cope with difficult, adult-sized experiences entirely on our own, without an ounce of emotional guidance. I learned about sex from a VHS tape my grandmother checked out at our local library. I learned I did not want to be a teenage mom from peers at school who graduated as new mothers or with bulging bellies, ready to deliver any day. 

Redefining Resilience 

Working in the therapy room has taught me what my adolescence couldn't: resilience doesn't come from ignoring feelings. It comes from having safe people who help us navigate them. 

Children don't need perfect parents, but they do need connection, validation, and the freedom to express what they're feeling without fear of shame or criticism. 

When I look at my daughter, I see the beautiful result of breaking that cycle. By giving her the space to cry, to be angry, and to voice her anxieties without judgment, I’m watching her build a healthier kind of strength, one rooted in self-awareness rather than emotional armor.

One of the greatest gifts we can give the next generation is what many of us desperately needed ourselves: emotional safety. We can raise strong, independent kids without teaching them that they have to suffer in silence.

There's a particular kind of tiredness that depression brings. It isn't the kind that sleep fixes. It settles into your thoughts, your body, and the way you see the days ahead, and it can quietly convince you that nothing will change and that effort is pointless. If you're reading this from inside that feeling, I want to say something gently and clearly: the hopelessness is a symptom, not a verdict. It is the depression talking, not the truth about your life or your future.

This post isn't going to ask you to overhaul everything or "think positive." When you're depleted, big plans tend to become one more thing to fail at. Instead, this is about small, doable, kind steps — the kind you can take even on a heavy day.

Start by lowering the bar, on purpose

Depression shrinks your capacity, and then it punishes you for having less capacity. One of the most freeing things you can do is to deliberately make your goals smaller than feels respectable.

If brushing your teeth feels like a lot, then brushing your teeth is the win. If you can't face a shower, washing your face with a warm cloth counts. If a walk feels impossible, standing outside your door for one minute is a real and complete thing you did. These aren't consolation prizes. When you're running on very little, tiny actions are genuinely the appropriate size, and finishing them tells your brain that you are still someone who can do things.

Tend to the basics, loosely

You've probably heard that sleep, food, movement, and daylight affect mood. That's true, but it's easy to turn it into another checklist you can fail. So hold it loosely. The goal isn't to optimize your health; it's to give your body a slightly better chance.

That might look like drinking a glass of water, eating something — anything — when you haven't, or opening a curtain to let light in. If you can step outside for a few minutes, even better, but inside near a window counts too. Movement can be as small as stretching in bed. None of this cures depression, and it isn't meant to. It just makes the ground a little more stable under you.

Name what you're feeling, without arguing with it

When hopelessness is loud, trying to talk yourself out of it usually backfires. A gentler move is to simply name it: I'm having the thought that nothing will get better. I'm feeling really heavy right now. Putting a few words to the experience creates a sliver of distance between you and the feeling — enough to remember that feelings, even crushing ones, move and change.

You don't have to believe a hopeful thing right now. You only have to notice that the despair is a state you're passing through, not the permanent shape of reality.

Reach toward one other person

Depression isolates, partly by telling you that you're a burden and that no one wants to hear it. That message is one of its cruelest lies. Connection doesn't have to be a deep heart-to-heart. It can be a one-line text to a friend, sitting in the same room as a family member, or replying to someone who reached out.

If talking about how you feel is too much, you can connect without it — ask someone to watch a show with you, or to just sit nearby while you each do your own thing. Being near another person, even quietly, can loosen depression's grip a little.

Let routine carry you when motivation won't

Waiting to feel motivated before you act is a trap, because depression specifically steals motivation. Often the feeling follows the action rather than preceding it. This is where gentle routine helps: not a rigid schedule, but a few small anchors in the day. Coffee in the morning. A short walk after lunch. The same calming thing each night. Anchors give shapeless days something to hold onto, and they let you move on autopilot when deciding feels like too much.

Be careful with how you talk to yourself

Listen for the harsh inner voice — the one calling you lazy, broken, or a failure for struggling. That voice feels like the truth, but it's the illness, and it makes everything heavier. You don't have to flip it into glowing self-praise. Aim for something plainer and kinder, the way you'd talk to a friend going through the same thing: This is hard, and I'm doing what I can. Treating yourself as someone worthy of basic gentleness is not indulgent. It's part of healing.

Know that this is treatable, and you don't have to do it alone

Depression is one of the most common and most treatable conditions there is. Therapy, and for many people medication, can make a real and lasting difference — not because you're weak, but because some things genuinely need more than willpower and a good attitude. If you haven't talked to a doctor or therapist, reaching out to one is one of the most powerful small steps on this whole list. A primary care doctor is a fine place to start if you're not sure where to go.

If the hopelessness ever shifts toward thoughts of not wanting to be here, or of hurting yourself, please treat that as a signal to reach out right away — to a trusted person, a doctor, or a crisis line. In the US, you can call or text 988 (the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) any time, day or night. If you're elsewhere, a quick search for your country's crisis line will point you to people trained to help. You deserve support in those moments, and reaching out is a sign of strength, not failure.

A closing thought

Recovery from depression is rarely a straight line. It tends to come back in pieces — an afternoon that feels a little lighter, a meal you actually tasted, a moment you laughed before you remembered to feel bad. Those pieces count, even when the heaviness returns afterward.

You don't have to find your whole way back today. You only have to take the next small, compassionate step. And then, when you can, the one after that. That's enough. You're enough, even now, in the middle of this.

This post is for general support and information and isn't a substitute for professional care. If you're struggling, please consider reaching out to a mental health professional or someone you trust.