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.