Black Mental Health: Healing The Invisible Ache w/ Courtney B. Vance
Mar 22, 2024
CareTalk: Healthcare. Unfiltered.
Talking about mental health is no longer taboo, but somehow Black men are still left out of the conversation. Enter Emmy Award-winning actor, Courtney B. Vance, whose book The Invisible Ache: Black Men Identifying their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power seeks to change that.
Courtney wants to revolutionize mental health in the Black community. Can it be done? And if so, how?
TOPICS (3:38) Enduring the journey of black men (7:12) Lack of trust in the healthcare system in the black community (10:48)The challenge of prostate cancer screening in the African-American community (14:24) Shame as a barrier to healing (16:56) What would revolutionize mental health in the black community? (21:18) Discovering the power of dreams (25:50) Healing with faith (29:29) Admitting the need for help
🎙️⚕️ABOUT CARETALK CareTalk is a weekly podcast that provides an incisive, no B.S. view of the US healthcare industry. Join co-hosts John Driscoll (President U.S. Healthcare and EVP, Walgreens Boots Alliance) and David Williams (President, Health Business Group) as they debate the latest in US healthcare news, business and policy.
🎙️⚕️ABOUT COURTNEY B. VANCE Courtney B. Vance is an award-winning actor with a prolific career in film and television. He began his career with roles in movies such as Hamburger Hill, The Hunt for Red October, and The Preacher's Wife. Vance has also had success on television, starring in shows such as The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Lovecraft Country, and Genius: Aretha. His acting has been recognized with numerous awards, including two Emmys, a Tony, a Critics Choice Award, and a Black Reel TV Award.
Vance has recently ventured into authorship. His latest book, co-written with Dr. Robin L. Smith, is titled "The Invisible Ache: Black Men Identifying Their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power." This book delves into the complexities of mental health for Black men in America. It offers a path towards healing, self-understanding, and achieving mental well-being.
Talking about mental health is no longer taboo, but somehow Black men are still left out of the conversation. Enter Emmy Award-winning actor, Courtney B. Vance, whose book The Invisible Ache: Black Men Identifying their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power seeks to change that.
Courtney wants to revolutionize mental health in the Black community. Can it be done? And if so, how?
TOPICS (3:38) Enduring the journey of black men (7:12) Lack of trust in the healthcare system in the black community (10:48)The challenge of prostate cancer screening in the African-American community (14:24) Shame as a barrier to healing (16:56) What would revolutionize mental health in the black community? (21:18) Discovering the power of dreams (25:50) Healing with faith (29:29) Admitting the need for help
🎙️⚕️ABOUT CARETALK CareTalk is a weekly podcast that provides an incisive, no B.S. view of the US healthcare industry. Join co-hosts John Driscoll (President U.S. Healthcare and EVP, Walgreens Boots Alliance) and David Williams (President, Health Business Group) as they debate the latest in US healthcare news, business and policy.
🎙️⚕️ABOUT COURTNEY B. VANCE Courtney B. Vance is an award-winning actor with a prolific career in film and television. He began his career with roles in movies such as Hamburger Hill, The Hunt for Red October, and The Preacher's Wife. Vance has also had success on television, starring in shows such as The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Lovecraft Country, and Genius: Aretha. His acting has been recognized with numerous awards, including two Emmys, a Tony, a Critics Choice Award, and a Black Reel TV Award.
Vance has recently ventured into authorship. His latest book, co-written with Dr. Robin L. Smith, is titled "The Invisible Ache: Black Men Identifying Their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power." This book delves into the complexities of mental health for Black men in America. It offers a path towards healing, self-understanding, and achieving mental well-being.
Talking about mental health is no longer taboo, but somehow Black men are still left out of the conversation. Enter Emmy Award -winning actor Courtney B. Vance, whose book, The Invisible Ache, Black Men Identifying Their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power, seeks to change that. Courtney wants to revolutionize mental health in the Black community. Can it be done? And if so, how? Welcome to Care Talk, America's home for incisive debate about healthcare business and policy. I'm David Williams, president of Health Business Group. And I'm John Driscoll, the president of Walgreens Health and the senior advisor at Walgreens. Join the ever -growing Care Talk community on LinkedIn, where you can dig deep into healthcare business and policy topics, access Care Talk content, and interact with the hosts. And please be sure to leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify. while you're at it. Welcome old friend Courtney B. Vance. It's great to actually welcome an old friend and I just was humbled by how much you opened yourself in your own experiences in the book Invisible Lake. What inspired you to kind of open the window and let the rest of us in to what's a, you know, it's an amazing professional journey, but also a very hard personal story to share with so many. You know once once my mother and thank you John and David. Thank you for having me here But it's a ministry now. We are my mother Challenged my sister and I when we were home when I mean nobody needs to get that phone call That your loved one died by suicide but she she Called us and we we went down there to get her his affairs in order and took us a month and as we were leaving, my mother said to us that she would like us to, all of us to go into therapy, find a therapist and talk to someone professionally about this. And I had never known that I needed to talk to anyone. I was raised to achieve and by achieving everything seemed to come to be okay, even though things were a little dicey. They... just keep achieving and keep achieving. It got me to Yale, it got me to Harvard, undergrad, it got me to Yale School of Drama, it got me in fences on Broadway, it got me to, with James Earl Jones, six degrees separation for a year and a half, and then I got the phone call. And at that point, all of us are sitting on the edge of our bed, eventually at two in the morning, and we have to decide, make a decision, what are we gonna do? What are we going to do? Everyone, if you live long enough, is going to have to make a decision about what their situations are, how are you going to deal with the situation. And when my mother challenged my sister, Cecily, Vance Pinchion and I, we responded. We went back to our respective cities and, you know, the journey of actually finding a therapist is a whole other thing. But we ended up with, I ended up with a short... Jewish lady, Dr. Margaret Kornfeld, five feet from the ground. And she was my person. As soon as I shook her hand, I knew. And we worked off of my dreams. And she challenged me quietly, gently. And I got to the place where after three years, it was my time. As soon as I started talking to her, our first session, I was talking to a mile a minute. And she said, Courtney, you don't have to tell me everything. And that is the journey for everyone. But for black men, there's so much on us. There's so much that we have to endure. I remember I was sitting on her stoop waiting for a session because when you're on time, you're late and when you're early, you're on time. So I was sitting on her stoop in Gramercy Park. If you know anything about Gramercy Park, you can't get into the park because it's locked and you need a key and only the people who live around the park have the key. So I'm sitting there and white folks are walking by me, looking, clutching pearls and walking in wide berths. Contextually though, you are a star on On top of the world. On top of the world. And famous in New York. on top of the world at 31, 30 years old on top of the Six degrees of separation, right? Ran for a year and a half, that's correct. Ran for a year and a half and was in it for at that point a year. And I went into my session and then talked, we talked about it. She said, Courtney, how you doing? I said, I'm not doing well. And I broke down. And so we had to start talking about what it is to be black and have black male and have... following you around in stores and not, you know, just enduring that. And it really is about how men deal with that with nowhere to go. Now, I was blessed in that I had an opportunity to, I found my person, I could afford my person. And when she said we need to go three sessions a week, I could afford that. But for the majority of the folks who can't afford the journey, you know, sitting down with five or six people, And then being able to afford it. That is what Dr. Robin and I, when we go around and talk, we talk about contextually how black men, what can we do? How can we and folks of color, men of color, how can we find our person? And even if you can't find it professionally, how you find it, you know, your barbers, your hairdressers, your just people who, someone you can talk to. But I was just in... I'm so sorry for the loss of your father, but your father sounded like just such a remarkable man. And when you punch a hole like that in your life, I just can't imagine getting that call. But how heroic that your mother was like, okay, this is the program. Yeah. And we all went in. Yeah. And there's a wonderful line in your book. I think it's from August Wilson about befriending and quieting your ghosts. And I was really moved by that. because that to some degree, we've all got ghosts. And at least I think in most of our cases, they're not our friends. And it just to take that on was pretty remarkable. I also think that you articulate in the book why we've got a bigger problem with African -Americans and African -American males. And it's not just, I think, the courage. as a male, as an achieving male to go get help, but also that the system itself doesn't necessarily encourage trust. And maybe you could talk a little bit about that second, there's the barrier of ego, which we all have around achieving and shame, but there's the other one of just, do you trust the system that's supposed to be taking care of you? It's, it is in the black community, hospitals is where you go to die. And doctors are folks who experiment on, on us. So we have a, we have a very challenging history with the medical profession. And today, you know, there's all these discussions of black women and pregnancies and not getting the care they, that white women would get. And so it's. It's a thing. It's a real, real thing. So you add that on top of not feeling... Just to put a point in it, Serena Williams did not get care and almost bled out when she told people she felt sick. I mean, it's at the highest levels. Highest level. If you hold for class and education and money and status, it's still a problem. It's a thing. It's a real, real thing. And... And it really is about us as a society saying everybody matters and everyone deserves great, not good, great healthcare. But it's a bias. It depends on how you array because healthcare is individualistic. Healthcare is about one -on -one, one person talking to another person. It's not the numbers. It's about this doctor talking to this patient. And it's... And if you see this patient in a certain kind of way based on how you were raised, that's how you're going to treat them. That's kind of care because the nurse is going to go based on what the doctor tells them to do. And it's treat everyone like it was your mother. Hello somebody. Treat everyone like it was your brother or your sister. How would you like them cared for? Now we understand that doctors have pressures on them in terms of medicine is changing, the business of medicine is changing. Everyone gets that. But when you look at the numbers in terms of how folks of color are dealt with and the care they get, you just, you know, the whole, I mean, the medical apartheid, you know, a book, you know, that is just, it just breaks it down to history of it. Madness by a young lady, Miss Hilton, who wrote a book this year that came out a couple of months ago, and she details her. family's journey with mental illness and the healthcare system in Baltimore. So there is a thing on top of everything about the ego and men, not just black men and prostate cancer, the numbers, just not wanting to go bend over and get poked. And then my thing with all of that is I don't want a white coat shaking his or her head saying, if only you had come in sooner. So find a way to go to, I mean, it's huge issue, that when something comes up, it's already too late. But the issue of prostate cancer screening in colonoscopy is a major challenge in the African -American clinicals, folks. Don't even trust the system enough to be evaluated. It's a... Part of the invisible ache is, I think, was very powerful is we've got a visible problem if you just look at the math, that across depression and suicide, but also around some of the biggest killers in the American society, which are heart disease and cancer. If we just get more folks screened, more folks will be saved. The larger issue is in order to get screened, that means you have to have a doctor you trust. and you have to have a doctor. You have to have money to afford the insurance. So it's a huge cycle. So by the time it happens, you're talking about diabetes, you have high blood pressure, all these things are dovetailing. And if you don't have a doctor who can refer you to specialists to actually unravel those things before they turn into a Gordian knot, there's no hope. It's too late. So it's a huge problem. But for us, it's a double problem because we don't trust people look at us as scants when it comes to everything. So, you know, if you don't have the fortitude and the ability to, the financial ability to outlast all of that and to push through all of that, there's no winning. Courtney, why the term the invisible ache? Why is that, why do you use that term? Because it's something that is there that the ache for African -American men is there. And it's, a lot of times we're afraid to look at it. A lot of times we don't see it. A lot of times we were, Dr. Robin Ellsmith and myself, who is co-author of The Invisible Ache, she often... talks about, we were doing an interview, a radio interview, and this gentleman said, who was sitting in on the radio interview said, well, I hear all y 'all, but I don't have time to take care of myself. I just got to go. I got so many people on me. I got so many people depending on me. And Dr. Robin and I looked at each other and she quietly said to him, I hear you, young man, but I don't think you can afford not to take care of yourself. Find the time. find a way. So it's an invisible killer. It's this lack of ability or lack of resources or lack of desire that we're not worthy to take care of ourselves. We're not, you know, the lack of ability in these food deserts and certain cities that there are. There are no Sprouts. There are no Trader Joe's. And so the best they can do is going over to McDonald's. you continually do that, and you don't have a doctor to check your numbers. When things start to happen, you just let... So it's... But I think one of the things you articulate really well though is how shame covers for pain. And if you... There's so much in the trauma of the black experience that actually creates even more of a barrier than the structural barriers. And we've got to start... building from both sides. Obviously, we need to find a way to actually have more doctors that look like the people they serve because I think that's how we break down, we get color insight. It's got to come beyond color blindness. The blindness of the healthcare system is actually creating more of a problem. But it still struck me that only one out of three African American men who would get benefit from therapy are actually going to therapy. You know, without your mother, would you think you would have? No, would have gone and gotten help? No, I wouldn't have known that I needed to, as I said, when I, when I finally started talking, I was talking a mile a minute. I had no idea that I should have been talking to someone 20 years ago or 10 years ago, 10 years prior. So no, that wasn't a part of our culture. That wasn't a part of things that we do. You just grind it out and. You know, the thing we were talking about yesterday is that it took my father's suicide for me to go get help. It took a death. And one of the things that Dr. Robin talks about is that we know how to suffer. We will sit in the midst of our pain and suffering because that's all we know how to do. There's no other alternative as so we think. But to get help to do the work of healing, it's always too much work. If I do it, do I have any guarantees that it's going to... But you'll stay where you are, because I can guarantee you if you stay where you are, you're going to be dead. So, you know, it's a new way of thinking that has to permeate all of our culture, a new way of thinking for everyone. in terms of just looking at people and dealing with people because everyone deserves good healthcare. Everyone deserves an opportunity to be taken care of. So John talked about, you know, sort of building from each side, but you've talked about also kind of revolutionizing mental health in the black community. What would that actually take? So we're not just talking about incremental improvements. Well, I don't know technically what that would take because the medical industry is shifting. Doctors are having more and more on them. They come in with the same amount of debt. And in order to take care of that debt, they have to service the numbers. And so maybe they don't have time to actually do, so tell me about what's going on. How are you doing? They don't have time to do that. And so... the pressures on them. I would have to say that, you know, it's a huge issue, you know, that really has to do with taking care of people. And in order to do that, doctors need to be taking care of themselves so that they can afford to have the, they can afford to take care of, you know, the one -on -one and to have a relationship with their patients. And they can and they and also probably they need to be schooled about in the medical profession about their bedside manner how you actually talk to people and engage with people that are different from yourself and you know, they may approach when a black person comes in they don't know how to talk to them and so they are maybe they're a little frayed little put off in case in which case the person of color who's a patient just like, I don't want to go back to that person. They don't like me. And it's that ephemeral. It's a relationship. It's a marriage of sorts, the doctor-patient relationship, as opposed to a number. And it's looking at things a different way. And the doctors, students, when they come out of medical school, they're probably being taught the same way. And the whole idea of the doctor -patient relationship. It's a relationship. Go ahead, Jeff. I just, Gordon, I was fascinated by the different paths you took to heal. You explored therapy in a very open-hearted way. It sounds like, and I was just trying to put it in context, the way you internalized almost a meditative kind of sitting with the pain and sitting with yourself. to kind of work through some of these issues. I just, you take, there's a lot in that, in your book, but there's a lot of practical recommendations. One, get a therapist, connect with people. Don't be the stoic, you know, tough guy that we, that you and I grew up with sort of assuming that that was how you persevered, but also kind of sit with things. I mean, I, the Lao Tzu thing, you can only sit and wait. Do you want to talk a little bit about how, that helped you kind of cope through and work through a tunnel through the pain, if you will? Well, that was Dr. Kornfeld challenging me. She said she asked me questions. She just quietly just, how do you make decisions, Courtney? Because she was gathering information about how we're going to deal with, you know, what was our relationship as a doctor -patient dynamic? What was our relationship going to be? Just establishing boundaries. You know, how do you make decisions? Courtney said, well, you just like everybody. I flip a coin, right? You know, just isn't that what everybody does? She said, just quietly, just, okay, Courtney, you know, sometimes, you know, there's, sometimes you just, you just got to sit there. You know, if you, you know, Courtney, do you have the patience to let the mud, which led to her next question. Do you have the patience to let the mud settle in the water and let the water become clear? I love that quote. I said, hell no. What are you talking about? We're clear water runs deep. What do you mean? No, I got to go. I want to go, go, go. She said, OK, good, good to know. Good to know. And she said, finally, she said, Courtney. I'd like you to get your dream. She said, I think first of all, she asked me, do you dream? I said, I don't know. And I don't know why she, it wasn't until maybe a year ago that I realized probably where that came from was that's how we met. I told her that the night before we met or a couple nights before we met, I had a dream where, and I had didn't dream. I dreamt in the dream there was pattern and a fabric pattern or whatever. When I went into her office and shook her hand, I knew that was my person from shaking her hand. And then she said, there's two sides to my office, to the right, it was a little cold and so I didn't like that. So I'm sitting to the left and there was another office area to the left. And I saw on the couch, from where I was standing, I saw on the couch, there was a pillow and the pillow was the same pattern in my dream. So I knew that was my person. And so probably that's where she got, she asked me. She said, I want you to get your dreams. She didn't tell me how, she didn't tell me what to do. She said, I'd like you to get your dreams. I said, huh, okay. So I had to figure out how to get my dreams. I was on Broadway and I said, the new school. So there was no computers in the new school. I said, let me go to the new school and look in their catalog, look in their catalog and they happen to have Dream Workshop, Gail Delaney, Breakthrough Dreaming in a month. So I went to my stage manager and said, I feel in a month, I feel I'm gonna be sick for the weekend. And so my stage manager wink wink and let the understudy know and we went to the workshop. And so in the workshop, long story short, she basically said, in order to get your dreams, Gail Delaney, breakthrough dreaming said, put a pencil, a little notebook and a flashlight near your bed and write down the first thing you. think of when you wake up, doesn't have to be dream, but you're training your mind to go where was I? So I did that and after the third night of gibberish writing down the dreams came through, seven dreams came through. And I had to go bed by nine, nine thirty, I slept solid till two, woke up at two, then from two thirty to six thirty, I slept dreams. So what happened is that I came in the next session with 35, 40 dreams and I said, bam, challenge me again. illuminating. Do they help you work through your path? The dreams. That's how we did our sessions. We worked off my dreams. There was no editing. There was no, well, I think that she, I just said, she said, Courtney, but it's too many dreams for me. You're, you're, you're, you're, that's who you are. Okay. I acknowledge you're amazing. Okay. So choose one dream and bring it to me and work off that dream. So for the next three years, we worked off my dream. And she said, we invited her to our wedding, Angela and I, and she pulled me aside in the reception and said, Courtney, we did some amazing work. I said, wait a minute, you have hundreds over the years clients. Are you saying me? Little old me? She said, Courtney, we weren't on the couch, but you were working directly off your subconscious. So I could see, I remember I brought her one dream about Natalie Cole and the state house. And she said, huh, let's do two sessions a week now, Courtney. And I said, I didn't ask why and say, what's going on? I just said, okay. So because she probably saw I was starting to fracture. And she said, let's do two, because it was my time. And so I embraced is what we're getting at. I embraced the this journey that I was on. I did I had two things I had to do in my life at that point. I had to do three things. I had to work. I had to take care of my dog bottom. They had to do my therapy. I had to go to bed because if I went when I went to bed, I got my dream. And when I got my dreams, I was able to come into my session and go, okay, here we go. Here's the most powerful one. She said, Courtney, what does that mean? Huh. Okay. Well, you know, the basement, all my dreams were sports related because I was a jock in high school. He was on the basketball court, the football field. Pretty damn good jock, actually. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, but that was, I, I'm, I'm, I'm using all of myself for my healing and, and basically it has to be about you embracing you. I, I, I got, I got into it. And that's what's inspiring is you open your heart to whether it's your relationship with Angela or the dreaming. Can you maybe, I mean, obviously she's been really critical at, I'm sure every moment, but in critical moments. But the other thing that was inspiring is you talked a little bit about faith. How important was faith in terms of serving as a foundation for your healing? It was everything. And that was the... My father's suicide was the first phase. Getting myself ready for, you know, to be ready to be a husband and a father. And then when I became a husband and father, we did nine weeks of premarital counseling. I thought I was ready. But I wasn't. And so I found myself nervous breakdown, anxiety attack, whatever you want to call it, in the hospital bed, tears running down my face, feeling all the failure of a man in the first three years of our marriage. And I heard Angela whisper, the doctor whispered to Angela, Dr. William Young, God rest his soul, said, there's nothing physically wrong with you, but I know of a great psychiatrist. And I said, and the Lord whispered to me at that point, I heard it saying, are you ready now? And I had been, I had a Godly counselor who was working with me, working me out. And he was telling me, Courtney, you gotta get in the Bible. You gotta read it for yourself. You gotta know, you gotta get ready for your wife. You gotta get ready. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, doc, yeah, yeah, doc. And I said, I know what I need to do. Take me home. And we went home and I did everything I had to do, David, John, I had to do it. My wife liked flowers in the house, went to the flower market every Tuesday and brought flowers in that house and the rains them around and went to the jobs I had to do, did those, took care of all the things I had to take care of. And in my free time I had, I was in that book. So much so that when somebody brought a book for me to read, and I just snatched that book away from them, this is after a year, snatched that book away from me and said, he don't read no book but the Bible, give me that book. Maybe I'll read it. And after I got to the, because I needed down, I needed a word. I needed to find, I needed to know how to deal with Angela Evelyn Bassett, how to be the man that she, I said I was going to be, I said I was, and she was waiting for me to be that man. And she was literally just watching. God bless her. God bless her. So she, you know, the Bible actually, you know, when I finished it the first time through, I went back and started over and went cover to cover, started taking notes. So about five or six times I went through the Bible. And in that journey, because it's a journey, life is a journey. It's not, you know, you're not gonna solve something and then you've arrived. It's a journey. You have to get that perspective that I'm on a journey for myself. And that is the, there was no achieving, there was no, this is now just life. This is quietly, you know, who are you? How do you wanna be perceived? And I've realized after going through that journey of reading that book that I'm here to help. What do you need me to do? What you need me to do? When the children came, serving, the power of submission, all of those lessons came. Which is a bit, I mean, particularly for a star, in a star -driven world that you're in, that message, the power. of that narrative of service comes across. And again, I think we can't cover everything that's so beautiful in your book, but what's what was powerful for me as an old, as someone who's no old friend, um, was how much you shared. And I think that to me is the, what the, is the, is the, is the door in to, to getting help, to getting care, to getting kind of understanding yourself. And I just, I'm just so powerfully, um, And you're all honored by the book. The realization came to me that once the hardest thing is to acknowledge I need help, to say it. And once you say it, all of a sudden, all these people came forward with, Courtney, I have this great person. I just wondered if, you know, Laura Lenny, God bless her. She was an understudy on six degrees separation. We all stayed. And she, when I came back with my mom, she said, Court, I have a therapist, a massage therapist, because she knew in between shows on Wednesday and Saturday I got massages. She said, her name is Gunilla Ass. Go see her. And I did. And that's how Dr. Kornfeld and I found each other. It's amazing that you shared. I mean, it's hard as a guy. It's particularly hard as an African-American, an African -American male. And to me, Court, that's... message that I really wanted folks to hear in Care Talk, but also the world because it is, again, you've honored us with your vulnerability, but I want to turn it into a call to action. Well, that's it for yet another episode of Care Talk. Our guest today has been Courtney B. Vance, author of The Invisible Ache, Black Men Identifying Their Pain and Reclaiming Their Power. I'm David Williams, president of Health Business Group. And I'm John Driscoll, the president of Walgreens Health and the senior advisor at Walgreens. Thank you so much, old friend Courtney B. Vance.