Welcome In

Hello and welcome to my spot! What do you do when times get tough? Do you get going or do you give up? I believe that tough times happen for a reason: to make us tougher! In personal training, my client doesn't know what their strength threshold is unless they lift weights! Same for us, the greater weight we lift, the more we strengthen our spiritual muscle!

Check out my piece below, What Tough People Do In Tough Times. And be sure to let me know your thoughts!

And, just in time for Christmas, my book Brotha2Brotha, Becoming Healthy Men from the Inside Out, and No Glory Without A Story, is now marked down! See the link below.



Stay up!

Eric

Saturday, January 26, 2013

The Literati: A Crisis in the Mental Health of Black America

The Literati: A Crisis in the Mental Health of Black America
by W. Eric Croomes

Suicide has always been a hush-hush topic in the African-American community; nothing silences a conversation more suddenly than talk of someone who has taken their own life, whether a family member or friend.  With the publication of Lay My Burden Down, Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis among African-Americans in 2000, the veil of secrecy and inherited shame was lifted and the subject was put out in the public arena.  Its authors, Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint and Amy Alexander, offer a convincing, cogent and relentlessly grievous account as to the myriad reasons so many African-Americans suffer from depression and other mental health issues and how those reasons lay the groundwork for the ultimate act of self-aggression: suicide.  In particular, and certainly disturbing, is the suicidal trend of black males in America, which tripled between the 1980’s and the end of the twentieth-century, according to the authors.  The common element of this trend is the loss of hope, a virtue that historically underpinned the ability of blacks to overcome the legacy of discrimination, segregation and unequal justice.  Says Poussaint and Alexander: “…the realities of modern life have begun to undermine the historic adoptions, the coping strategies that are part of the African-American culture.”  Lay My Burden Down requires the immediate and consistent attention from anybody who senses the urgency of self-destructive behaviors in a family member or friend and is a must-read for policy chieftains, church leaders and grass-roots organizations. 

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