Black youth are facing a muted mental health crisis. CDC data reveals that suicide rates rose 53 percent over a decade—a staggering reality that challenges the long-held myth that suicide is primarily a white epidemic. The question now: how do we reach young people before a crisis turns deadly?
In Brooklyn, Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health has found an answer in an unexpected place. It’s not waiting in a therapist’s office. It’s happening where the hum of clippers and the scent of hair products meet open conversation.
Through the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health‘s “Beyond the Stigma” program, local barbers and stylists are being trained as an unexpected frontline defense. Today, they complete an 8-hour Mental Health First Aid course that teaches them to recognize distress, listen without judgment, and guide young clients toward professional help.
“In our communities, we know the history of mistrust,” Dr. Marilyn Fraser, CEO of the institute, told The Root.
Named for tennis champion and health advocate Arthur Ashe, whose legacy extended beyond the court to advancing health equity, the institute in Brooklyn has long worked through trusted community spaces to improve health outcomes. When it launched Beyond the Stigma to address youth mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, it built on that foundation by weaving mental health into its existing barber and beauty shop initiatives.
The institute also recruits about 12 youth peer leaders each year, ages 15 to 21, for a six-week program that teaches mental health literacy, coping skills, and how to recognize when friends may need professional help. Community elders are also engaged through programming in senior centers.
Dr. Fraser has seen firsthand what opening lines of communication can do. That mistrust, combined with cultural beliefs that emotional struggles should be handled privately or viewed as weakness, often keeps people from seeking formal mental health care. Instead, Fraser believes support must begin in places where people already feel seen, heard and understood.
“Our studies show that sometimes people are waiting for that question to be asked,” she said.
The new CDC data speak to the urgency for these programs, tracking suicide rates between 2014 and 2024. “It’s sad seeing those numbers,” Fraser said. “So people often suffer in silence.”
One way the institute extends that work is through Paint and Heal workshops, where participants use art to process trauma, reduce stress and build community. The approach reflects Fraser’s belief that mental health support should be culturally relevant and accessible, not limited to traditional clinical settings.
The institute measures success through participant assessments and community feedback, but Fraser said some of the strongest evidence comes from what participants tell them afterward.
“For men, one of the things that has come out a lot is that they have not had this safe space to talk about mental health,” she said, noting that many leave realizing “it’s okay to say that I need help.”
Funding remains the institute’s biggest obstacle to expanding the program, but Fraser hopes to bring it into more schools and communities. If the model offers one lesson beyond Brooklyn, it’s that suicide prevention doesn’t always begin in a therapist’s office. Sometimes it begins with a conversation between people who already know and trust one another.
“When the conversation starts,” she said, “people will talk.”
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