**This post is in collaboration with Durham Tech Counseling Services.**
July is Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, and while the month is almost over, many of these resources are available all year round both through Durham Tech and through outside agencies.
Are you a Durham Tech student looking for a safe space to discuss anxiety and other issues due to Covid-19? Have your heard about Let’s Cope?
The Let’s Cope group, hosted by LaKe’a Teel and Letoria Brown, is a support group for Durham Tech students that meets virtually over Microsoft Teams twice a week. They discuss specific topics, coping strategies, and share their experiences. This year has been tough (an understatement), and it looks like things will stay tough into the fall semester.
If you’re a student, please consider joining the group if and when you need to. If you are faculty or staff, direct students to the group whenever possible. We all need a support system to deal with things both big and small, from a global pandemic to help concentrating on schoolwork.
Information on previously covered topics can be found on the Counseling Services page, and many more topics are scheduled for the upcoming semester.
A great resource is NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Health, a group that advocates, educates, and helps both individuals and organizations in topics intersecting with mental health and underrepresented communities. Their website is full of information: their blog tackles tough topics, they have powerful videos of people sharing their stories, and they publish surveys, resource guides, and reports on important issues.
Read their press release about Minority Mental Health Month and explore their website. I promise you will find interesting and helpful information.
Black Mental Wellness is a group that aims to decrease the stigma of mental illness, while providing individuals and organizations evidence-based information and resources created within a Black context. They have excellent information sheets on various mental health diagnoses like attention deficit disorder, anxiety disorder, and more.
This corporation provides a wealth of resources as well as services related to minority health issues. I believe the website is not only informative but, could be beneficial to our campus community.
Karen Mosley, Counseling Services Coordinator
The Library also has resources if you want to learn more about particular topics related to mental health and minorities. Some specific databases that may help you explore these topics are ProQuest Psychology Database, Gale Onefile: Psychology, and Gale Onefile: Diversity Studies.
To access these databases, use the link provided above or go through the library’s Articles, Journals, and Databases box on the library homepage and log in off-campus by using your Durham Tech username and password–the same one you would use for Sakai or Self-Service.
Don’t be afraid to ask a librarian for help with research and coming up with key search terms, and don’t be afraid to reach out to campus Counseling Services or your academic advisor for more information on helping yourself or someone you love with mental health concerns.
