Check Ya Mental

Don't accept it though. I'm so damn mad. It's making my head explode. Rat Race, cat Chase where my credit go, trying to stay out the state pen and the Federal ro Dope Knife Lingua franca. We're the best show. Buckle up, We're about to begin the show. Oh oh yo, what is going on? Party people? You are listening to Dope Knife. We are the duo known as Waiting on Reparation. You know this is the show where we talk ki pop and politics, all that jazz. You know how it is

follow us like subscribe to all this? We don't. We don't give these plugs enough. I think I think we need to. We're too humble. Are we even wrappers? Like? What is this? Just? Like? Well, well, if you'll if you would like to give five stars on the Apple Podcast, it would really help. I would make me feel better. Oh how you doing. I'm good, I'm good. Yeah, things are going well over here. How you've been, I've been good, yo, hanging in and maintaining you know, it's it's the episode

that we got today kind of. It's a it's a good thing because it's like, you know, the weight of everything just kind of getting to you, to get in the heads a little bit, and you know, I had to take a little break in a breather and kind of shut myself down for about a day too, just to have some alone time. I know you're probably you're probably going through the rigors of it. Oh man. Yeah. I went to my my my grandmother's house in North Carolina over the weekend too, so that she can meet

her great grandson. But then I just I just slept for like twelve hours a day. I didn't I didn't realize that was that tired until I got out into like the middle of nowhere, this farm in like very rural like country Bumpkin, North Carolina. Uh, you know, other people on tees and whatnot watching the baby, and I just like let my guard down and just allowed myself to sleep. It's crazy. Oh yeah, well I mean I probably still even need more. It's still probably need even

more sleep. Yeah, but um yeah I apparently really needed it. But this is crazy, like how you can be running and running around and not realize how depleted you are until you actually let yourself like rest. You're like, oh, ship, I was actually racked right now. So like, do you think that like your rest did more for you physically or you're just your mental both. I think it's all.

You know, we are, our bodies and minds are you know, one big pool of goo um, And so I think, yeah, the physical rest also helping my mental a little bit. Um for sure. Definitely, definitely that's good. We all everybody needs to take some times to rest the mental. I like how we're like straight up using like nineties jargon, you got you gotta you gotta rest those mentals, you gotta relax your mentals. So what do we got for

the people today? But yeah, today we are gonna be talking about mental health and hip hop um, both the sources of mental english within hip hop communities and how those have been Um expressed through the music of folks like Ghetto Boys, UM and then barriers as well to access to mental health care, Um expressed in music from a sub rock to UM Day from his album Psychodrama. UM. So yeah, we're gonna go through we might we might even talk a little bit about our own personal healing. Yeah,

through the through the music. It's like if you if you really, I mean, you know, we're gonna I guess we're gonna specific We'll be talking about, you know, like overt examinations of like how you know mental health is dealt with in hip hop. But really, if you just listen to all of this stuff, it's like one big therapy session at the end of the day. Whether somebody's like flexing about like you know, diamonds on their wrists or being very real about like struggles, all of it

is a cope. All of it. Yeah healthy and I think largely a healthy one in that as as compared to other ways that people may seek to remedy their internal strife. So yeah, well, I mean, you know we've covered it before that hip hop was kind of started as a big copings. You know what I'm saying, it's like, I don't I don't want to fight. I'm angry enough to fight this dude, but ship, let's just work it out on the mic, or let's let's break dance in

the streets. You know, it's exactly exactly. Yeah, get into all that. Wait or did you want to talk about you want to do? You have something you want to talk about? You have someone? Well, I mean, you know, when when when you approached me about you know, I'm I am a fan of the sports balls, you know, several of the sports ball sports I'm a fan of.

So when you were mentioning that we should do this episode, it had me thinking about a story that's going on in the sports world right now with Philadelphia seventy sixers player Ben Simmons. And he's been having you know, for those of you who don't know, he's been having disputes with his team. He's there's two sides to every story,

so I'm not even getting into that. But he's trying to sit out but still get paid, and he can't sit out and get paid for not playing, so you know, he's he's come after several attempts of going back and forth with the team. He's now come out and said that he has met he's going through a you know, a mental crisis of sorts or he's having you know, he's not mentally prepared to join the team, and you know, the team has been supportive. It seems like the fan

base is supportive. The media is kind of being agnostic about it, but it's kind of started up a discussion about when is it fair to question the motives of someone's claims of you know, mental anguish and stuff like that, and everyone's being very sense I mean, you know what, I guess the cool thing about it for me seeing it play out is I feel like five years ago, this wouldn't even have been a debate whether he's right

or wrong in a matter. I think like five years ago, if he had come out and been like, hey, guys, now I'm having some mental issues. I think that just off the bat, everybody would be like, oh, that's bullshit, you lie in you lie, you know what I mean. At least reached a place where people to take people's mental health claims seriously exactly exactly because it has been distigmatized two a degree, thanks in part to things like hip.

I would say exactly and just you know, empathy to you know what I'm saying, like, yeah, it could be us, you know what I'm saying. And we can't read anybody's mind to tell what they're thinking. But I mean that was just like a just one of those pop cultural things that I was following that made the episode seem like, oh man, this is really relates to stuff that I'm

into right now. Yeah, And I mean, with that following the situation closely, I would say that, like in gen role, my approach to things like this would regards to the

credibility of claims of mental health crisis. Um, I think there's a far wider array of thanks that could be construed as mental health crisis than we normally accept as a society failure to cope with all kinds of situations and and orienting ourselves to to those failures with with a with an eye towards how like what's resources someone needs in order to perform effectively is the kind of shift we probably need in our society in order just

to be healthier. Healthier society. You look at things like you know, gun violence and interpersonal you know, domestic partner, intimate partner violence. UM, even just like work, stress and things like that. UM. I mean, yeah, I think a lot of it require subsystems change for coping with really toxic systems, but also UM showing work and passion for and with that, UM providing more resource is for folks that are going through it in a variety of ways.

I mean, this person is, you know, they're fucking negotiating basketball contracts or whatever. Um, these are probably a better situation than most, and so I don't have the most empathy for that. He's in a very very good situation. Yeah, but I don't doubt at all that he's going through something mentally that sounds like it would be really fucking aggravating too. Yeah, I go through doubt. I don't doubt that.

I just think it's I guess it's the optics are kind of hard to escape, you know what I'm saying. That's just what it comes down to, that it's like there's no way of getting in anyone's head. But it's just it's unavoidable to you know, Oh, you're having this problem with wanting to be on the team for the last five months, and then yesterday you're you mentally can't

do it. Yeah, I mean, I think that creating a culture of compassion and um well and resourcing our communities effectively to a like, resourcing our community is effectively to help folks cope with mental stress and emotional stress. Let's talk more about the Yeah, we don't, we don't need to.

We're talking about it, dude, trying to hang on to a I was gonna say, oh yeah, I think I think that creating a more passionate culture and better resource communities for coping with UM mental stress also enables people to be more honest about it, Like I would say that like, oh, perhaps like the stand alone like, oh, I'm having some mental health you know, problems, Like I

don't know to what do you believe that? Um? But but if you were to be honest about hey, the situation has been very stressful for me and it's negatively impacting my health. UM. I think if we had a culture that validated folks when they came forward to speak about the true nature of what they're going through internally, UM, we'd have fewer disputes over like is this real or is that real? Because people can be honest about you, Look, I know this is kind of some function. However, I

am going to for these two. I totally agree. And and you know it's like what is worse the opposite or you know what what what what seems to be because if if the situation is people are more empathetic and compassionate you know I'm saying, and open to understanding what other people are going through and ship like that. And there are people who want to take advantage of that,

who slipped through the cracks of that. It's still a better situation than a society where nobody wants to hear hear it, no one cares about your feelings and fuck you, you you know what I'm saying, do it with it. There'll be a big baby. Yeah, we're gonna get into UM all things mental health on this episode. I would like to add a content warning. We do have some

discussion of UM suicidal idegation, things like that. But I hope that we have a lot of resources here as well for folks that resonate with someone what we talked about. So say soon, we'll be right back, and we're back, and we're gonna start off by talking about UM ghetto boys mine playing tricks on me, which I imagine UM

many of our listeners are familiar with released still my first. Um. They talk a lot about paranoia, like staying up at night, seeing people in your room, being constantly on edge, And according to the Mayo Clinic, it sounds as if the mcs are describing symptoms of post traumatic post traumatic stress disorder, you know, from recurrent I wanted distressing memories of a traumatic event, upsetting dream good nightmares about the traumatic event,

troubled sleeping, overwhelming, guilt of shame, always being on guard for danger, and thoughts of suicide. Um. All sounds like you know, textbooks on terms of PTSD, and they're not the only rappers to talk about suicidal thoughts. In addition to the Biggest song by the very name, will Wayne opened up into that Stephanie and about his teenage suicide at him but she had previously branded an accidental shooting. So apparently when he was twelve years old he shot

himself in the chest. Um and said, oh, it was like you know, he mishandled the gun or something like that. But you know, in an interview, uh King Clean that his I think his mother at threatened to take his music career away or take away streams of rapping, and he thought that without that, you know, he couldn't. He

he didn't want to live anymore. And he actually rapped about the incident on his two thousand fifteen track London Roads from the album Free Wheezy Messita Remember going in your gun drawer, putting it to my chest, missing my heart by sentimnoz oh Lord like talked about it openly and didn't even I didn't even know that i'd heard that story before, but I heard the accidental discharge stories, so I didn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He later came out and was like, actually, you know, this was a real

attempt um taking my life sadly twelve years old. So, according to the CDC, rates of depression anxiety leapt upwards for young folks between the ages twelve and seventeen, increasingly so in the last two decades, and stories like this or why. The Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act was signed into law October two thousand four. It was the first legislation to provide fundings specifically for youth suicide prevention programs.

Under this legislation, funding was set aside for campuses, states, tribes, and US territories to develop, the valuate and improve early intervention in suicide prevention programs. But where do these symptoms come from? Like why twelve years old whyl Wayne going for the gun drawer? Why? Like what sorts of influences in the lives of folks I got'll boids leave them to create a song like my plane tarts on me. Definitely, it's like nurture and environment, you know what I'm saying.

It's like, like we were just saying, it's like there is a natural stress that comes to living in a capitalistic society. It's just built in. You know what I'm saying. It's it's built in. It's a dog eat dog. Everybody's in constant competition with one another. So you've got that base level of stress. But then you add on conditions

that make it even the compound on ship. But when you have a lot of caps that are coming from difficult circumstances, whether it be economic or maybe it's high crime areas, they don't have the influences and mentors and adults that are around them that they need and ship and then they think that they're just going through life

regular because this is how it is. But in actuality, people aren't supposed to be living through that right and I think that I think that comes that We're gonna circle back to talk more about stigma as a barrier to access in mental healthcare in a bit. But I think that's really more the case than anything, is that it's the normalization of trauma of just like, oh, everyone's like this, everybody you know feels this way, and then you actually find out, Wait, y'all don't think about this stuff.

Y'all don't lay awake at night, you know, with your finger on the trigger, like y'all out here living happy lives. I thought everybody funk this way because we don't talk enough about mental health. Um, you know, people afraid to come forward to when they're struggling or you know, they don't even know that they should talk about it because they think that they're experiencing is perfectly common and fine.

So I have a question, and I I'm sorry if this comes off insensitive or not, because like I've definitely dealt with my issues before, and I've had thoughts and all that sort of thing. But I just wonder, is it like determined that all, like all attempts or thoughts of suicide are related to mental illness? Yeah? I think so. I mean, I can't. I can't speak from like a clinicians like perspective, like how they formally categorize things like that.

But this, I definitely think that's not normal. I don'initely think that's like a sign of um even not a mental illness in terms of like something um even determined like somebody with like chronic illness or something like that who doesn't want to feel the pain anymore. But that's still be like you know what I mean, like if you if you you with with guidance and clarity, you probably wouldn't be thinking of Still that's a good question.

That's a good question. I mean, if it's a reasonable at times as a couple of response to adversity with you know, thinking about like terminal illness or something like that. Perhaps we're diving into in a future episode because I'm sure there's some research out there on that topic that

might be really eliminating. Um. Coming back to the conditions we living through men, I mean, like in addition to folks like you know, the Getta Boys, billow Wayne at a young age seeing seeing like physical aviolence in the community, seeing people get shot or losing a parent, either do incarceration or community violence. I think that there's a lot more trauma in the community. Then we realize that it's

grown from systemic forms of violence. So the trauma of hunger, of being hungry every day, and the procarity of not knowing what your next meal is coming from housing procarity like not knowing where you're going to sleep at night if you're family is like moving from the house to house, shelter to shelter, hotel room, staying with auntie's and uncle, things like that. UM, like, yeah, I've got a family and you've got like four hundred, only four hundred dollars

in your bank account. That's fucking stress. It's stress. It's stress, and it you know, it lends itself to It lends itself substance abuse, it lends itself to UM just suppoor coping mechanisms of many kinds. It lends itself to UM behavioral disorders. I would say, Um, you know, there's a saying hurt people, hurt people, and this is after something I've been studying as I've been thinking about public safety

interventions in the community. UM. One sort of model that I've been really interested in recently is the cure violence approach to disrupting violence in the community, which takes an

epidemiological approach to UM understanding violence in the community. So it's it's they sort of think that, like UM, violence is like a virus that when you're exposed to it, you convince you then are more likely to transmit it to other people by then doing acts of violence, so hurt people, hurting people, and so they you know, UM

employ or this program youre violence. They employ violence interrupters who act like contact tracers in a certain sense, UM, identifying folks in the community who have been impacted by violence and who are thus at risk of transmitting violence to other people. And they halt communities git spread just like with COVID wearing a mask or social distancing by encouraging mitigation strategies. Um. Um. These folks they connect people who have been exposed to violence with healing and resources

so that they don't keep the cycle going. So UM thinking about it just like you know, just like COVID, just like any other virus where UM any any other like national health crisis any other. Yeah, I mean, like public health at large. UM. You know, the fabric, the strength of the fabric of the community is such determinant

for its health in so many ways. But um, thinking about about like, Okay, how do we disrupt cycles of violence by like halting the spread, by cutting you know, interrupting, you know, cutting off somebody before they go out and hurt somebody else, by helping them heal from the trauma that they have, um, they're carrying with them as a result of violence exposure from the past. So medical hypotheses about what causes PTSD, Yes, let's talk about where, like

what people think this is coming from. Some say it could be a survival mechanism intended to help us survive further traumatic experiences, for example flashbacks. Many people with PTSD experience may force them to think about an event in full details, so you're better prepared for if it happens again. The feeling of being on edge hyper arousal may have

developed to help you react quickly to other crisis. As a result of neoliberalism, commodifications of basic needs food, housing, and education, and cycles of community violence without adequate healing resources in the communities, we leave treatment to the jails. Yep. So it's like, oh, well, you ain't got any you ain't got nowhere to sleep, You ain't got nobody talk to um. But we do have jails, and so that's where home homeless jail, prostitute making money selling your body

and you know, not hurting nobody. Jail still some some gymps on the seven eleven jail um which all of these things are driven by these you know, lesser spoken of forms of trauma that from folks experience from very early ages within hip hop communities to the National Alliance of Mental Health reports that two million individuals with mental illness are booked into jails each year, Nearly of incarcerated men and of incarcerated women have a serious mental health condition,

and that rates of mental illness and persons of jails are three to six times that of the general population. In two eighteen, Washington Post reported that one thousand, one sixty civilians had been fairly shot by police, two hundred

of whom were confirmed to be mentally ill. UM statistic then um is that people with untreatedments illnesses are sixteen times were likely to be killed during a police encounter, and of state prisoners with mental health disorders are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes higher in certain parts of the country. In this study, those with mental health diagnosis, jailed and King County, Penellis County, Washington. More than sixt of them

were minor crimes or survived. So you know, I spent on the talking about like cycles of violence in the community,

but even but it's even petty ship. I brought out the example of someone feeling a slim gym from the seven eleven um, which is like but which is still blaming people behind bars because we don't have because we don't we don't read signs of of this behavioral malfunction if you want to say as as something to be treated, something that's requiring some sort of mental health intervention, instead like you broke the law, so we're gonna throw you

behind bars. And then another thing that we're not even like dealing with is ther motherfucker's know what jail does to you. She doesn't make you better. Hell no. So if you are going they're locking you up for said slim Jim, that's a fucking traumatic event that if you were fine beforehand, like if you really just wanted to slim Jim and didn't want to spend a dollar fifty nine, then they lock you up. Even just getting booked for

some ship like that is a traumatic experience. Being in holding a holding tank is a traumatic experience, or you know what I'm saying. So all this ship contributes to right, and so we read traumatized, traumatized people who were going to get out and do what continue to act out because they've been traumatized and not adequately treated for their

underlying cause is of behavioral dysfunction UM. To look at a concrete example of the sort of link between UM defunding of social services and expansion and reliance upon UM prisons for mental health treatment quote unquote, Chicago's Cook County Jail is the biggest single side jail in the United States and one of the biggest mental healthcare providers in

the country. About a third of the jail six thousand or so inmates have been diagnosed with the mental illness, and many of them were sent to the facility after the state reduced funding for hospitals and community based outreach during the economic recession between like eight and UM. In those years, Illinois slash one point or no, excuse me, not one point. Oh god, this is even worse. A hundred and thirteen point seven million dollars from its budget

for mental health services. Causing at least to state operated in patient facilities and six clinic in Chicago alone close and with your services available, more people struggling with psychoses have been pushed into the streets, I think, and I think this is both in terms of not having beds to sleep in and push into the streets with regards

to criminality. Um and these days and mirror national trends between two that and nine and twelve, state like just the state legislatures around the country cut four points three five billion dollars in services for people with psychiatric problems,

even while the need for services increased. So that explains the fucking music bro Like, god dammn, you got bigas out here shooting kids of each other, going to jail for it, being retraumatized with that experience, getting now doing it again, all because you know, there's this tight link between uh, commodification of basic needs, privatization, expansion of jails, and just creating and sustaining the cycle that we're talking, we're hearing and talked about in so much of the music.

How do we get access the treatment and resources? One side of it is acts as a treatment and resources logic certainly seems to think so. As you may recall, in twenty seventeen, Logic partnered with the National Suicide Prevention Hotline on his song one eight hundred to seven three eight to five five, known colloquially as one eight hundred, which is the number for the hotline. The first hook and verse of the song is from the perspective of someone who is calling the hotline and they want to

admit suicide. This is followed by a second chorus where the protagonists ostensively finds the will to live again. So this hotline that he parted with, it's funded by the U. S. Suthens Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which is an agency within the U S. Department of Health and Human Services um UH SAMSA I guess as you could call it. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration was established by Congress in when operating ever since, expanding through some

pieces of federal legislation over the years. But in the week's fall release, calls directed to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline rose by and visits to their website increase from three hundred thousand to four thousand. Over the following months, um the hotline told things of the Rolling Stone that they received the second highest daily call volume ever. It's over four thousand calls on the day that the song was released. So it really save some lives. You literally

save us the lives. I mean a lot of people talk about how hip hop save their lives and like, I'm one of those folks too that they definitely would not be here today if it was not for hip hop. But this nick out here literally like savor lines like you call this number and you know, and help people. But that that's the thing, you know, it's the thing that we always It's kind of like a recurring theme on this show is it's like when rappers have something to say and they put it in a song, it's

I'm sorry. It's just more effective than anything you say in any interview. It's just that's just what it comes down to you. I firmly believe that, Yeah, it gets into your psyche and has this level of credibility that you can't find even if you go see a mental health professional, like talking to a therapist that might seem scared to you, but logic telling you to caul this

hotline is something that seems accessible and trustworthy. Now we got a British rapper Dave and his debuse debut solo album Psychodrama, which won the brit Award for Album of

the Year Now. The album followed Dave's therapy session. He discusses his older brothers and the impact of their prison the prison convictions had him, as well as his struggles with mental health and the challenges facing black working class used in britt We've talked a lot about the environmental impacts on mental health um with regards to access to resources for stability in the community, but the song environment kind of also proved that making it out doesn't necessarily

heal trauma or bring fulfillment necessarily. Let's listen to it real quick. Welcome from there's no clause to get truth. We've got out. So he's talking about, you know, it's got the flashy cars and the gold chain, but really what he sees the lack of self worth and battle scars, the way that people use these material possessions um ostentiously

to hide what's really going on underneath. And like all throughout the songs talking about kind of like running from your problems by seeking out material comforts, be they you know what it wealth or talk about you know, having sexual groupies or whatever you gotta do to like avoid dealing with what you feel underneath yeah, different different forms

of yeah dope. Effectively, this is similar to this kind of was the same sort of theme throughout Tyler the Creator's last album called Me If You Get Lost, just like that simp concept of I'm feeling sad, I'm gonna go buy a car today. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly UM

and then UM. At the end of the song, it ends with a rebuttal from his therapist, so the beat drops out and he hears theres kind of respond like I can't remember um, and then we got We've got a number of people actually talk about UM going to therapy asat rock and His song Shrunk Up of his two thousand and sixteen album The Impossible Kid discusses navigating

the bureaucracy of mental health care. Um. He starts out filling out a form at the front desk and sitting awkwardly in the waiting room, and then recounts a combative conversation with the therapist, most finally in her office. In fact, in the music video for the song, his visit to the therapist office is recast is like a video game where he has to beat various bosses in order to get to the therapist, who he then engages in a final boss battle. Let's check out a little bit of that.

My medical history is the course Sooner Buffalo Charlottean Psychiatry and trouble Suiting. What are the barriers to accessing mental health care? Yeah, well, he talks about some of them in the song, like filling out the paperwork and making sure it's some covered by your insurance. And it's it's simple things like taking time off work to go to get the appointment. Um, and the fear of like when you sit down in that chair in the person's office, having to bear your soul. It's not an easy thing.

But there's a lot of institutional barriers in addition to like the psycho social ones. Um, I mean ship some real talk about my own personal experience real quick. Um. I'm on Medicaid because I don't have insurance to my employer anymore. I used to have it through the University of Georgia. And um, I've been on I've been on medication for like I guess almost a couple of years now,

for like depression, YadA YadA, Dad YadA YadA. Um, Well it turns out it's uh, it wasn't there a Medicaid didn't want to cover it, and so when I went to just you know, just go get it refilled a couple of weeks ago, they were like, Hey, that's gonna be twelve hundred dollars um as opposed to the fifteen

I have been paying for the last like two years. Um. So I'm running back and forth between like my psychiatrists and my doctor trying to get the right paperwork, you know, rationing my medication because you know, like about to run out and then running out entirely, all while also trying to like have the will to call the psychiatrist back and be like, Yo, did you fill that paperwork today?

Can I go pick up my meds today? Imagining like if I hadn't had social support to like go jump through all those hoops, A lot of people don't, and a lot of people do end up like just ending it like like, nah, I can't handle I can't handle stay on the phone with these insurance people. I can't handle.

You know, I don't have the money to like I like, I got to the point where I was like, I'm about to put in my credit card right now and get the ship, because like this is getting really bad, like imagining the both the financial and the bureaucratic barriers access. It's not even imagining. It's like, yo, I'm ship. It's brutal um. So I can totally understand why people don't even want to, like they don't even know what it's like, but assume it's too hard and don't even try to

get out to get help. I mean, if I can be candid, that's kind of my situation right now. You know. It's like I've for a long time I've wanted to talk to somebody about my dad. Just my father passed away. I didn't really take the time to process or grieve properly, you know what I'm saying. I just kind of kept

going on business as usual. So lately, the older than getting it's like, man, I think I should finally sit down and talk to somebody, But because I'm already busy, like the additional hurdles of like everything that you said, from setting it up to all the paperwork, to taking the time off of the things that I'm doing to

do it, It's just it's hard, you know. You know what I'm saying, and like I have, I have a relatively mild case of it because like I just kind of feel like I need to talk to someone, you know what I mean, My ship doesn't feel like a life or death issue, but there's millions of people who are, yeah, and and little issues. I mean, yours is not small, let me clarify. But things that go on treated for

a while can compound. So I'd be thinking, you know, I'm handling this well for a while, but you don't actually like the process that ship can build up, you know, And so something that wasn't rapping and not talking to somebody for the last eight years, she she, she, let's talk about some of the other reasons why people don't

get help. So we talked a little bit about stigma, um, which you know, people are scared of, not like backlash, of being honest, you know, being honest with their employer, being honest with their friends and family, being judged for what they're going there rather than support it. Um. And we spoke some as well about the normalization of of of emotional like inner turmoil, the assumption that everyone feels

this way. UM. I definitely before I started like doing therapy, like thought that I feel like, oh, the like morbid thoughts I would have, or like whatever struggles I was going through every what went through them, and then I would like talk to someone. UM. Remember one time I

made my friend cry. I was just like talking. I was like, oh, you know, I've had this on my mind and that on my mind and not feeling great, and she like sobbed hearing me, hearing me talk about it, I was like, oh, ship, I didn't realize that was that bad. Like those moments where you're like, huh wow, this is more severe than I had. Soon because we

don't talk about it, we can normalize it inside. But then there's you know, structural barriers in addition to those cultural ones UM talk about, like lack of mental health care professionals and low income communities, particularly culturally responsive care, so being access getting access to someone who looks like you,

who's from your same background. UM. The US is facing an overall shortage of doctors, but the shortage of mental health care professionals is steeper than in any other category, part because UM of low reimbursements from government and private insurance or mental health care people don't even go into that field because they're like, I'm not gonna make any money doing it. Um, or when they get out, they choose to make people pay out of pocket for their services. UM.

Private sector and ship yep. So you know, urban clinics and providers often have long waiting lists and people can wait for months before they get a basic intake appointment. Affordability is also an obstacle as well. Um. Things improved with the A c A. With the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act two thousand eight requires insurance groups offering coverage for mental health or substance use disorders to

make these benefits comparable to the general medical coverage. It required that deductibles, co pays out of pocket maximums, treatment limitations, and other mental health or substance use disorders related costs must be no more restrictive than the same requirements or benefits offered to other medic for other medical care. But even with that, you know, um, the cost of treatment still often limits people's access to mental health services or

knowledge again, knowledge of the maze of our insurance bureaucracy. Um,

there's the assumption that it will cost a lot. So even when there are like low cost resources, I think for example, here in Athens, we have this thing called Newchie Space where you can get sliding scale UM counseling, particularly for musicians UM, and a lot of people don't even go because they're they're just people just assume that is it will cost too much, and they're not wrong, because these fucking insurance companies try to gauge you bleed

you dry for everything and every last red cent, every last red cent. But it's not necessarily UM, cut and dry, that health care expansion is enough to fix the problem. Listeners of the show no that I'm a vulnerative Medicare for all UM. But in two Oregon held a randomized uttering to decide which low income people would receive Medicaid.

Two studies UM done in the aftermath by M. I. T. And Harvard found that medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical measured physical health outcomes in the first two years, but it did lower rates of self reported depression by ten. Reasons for this, I think that UM access to mental health care SURE probably lowered self recorded rates of depression. People were probably also less suppressed because

they weren't stressed about having health coveraged. Yeah, it was one last thing to worry about. So like, yeah, I would say I'm happier than if I couldn't see a doctor at all. I mean, I think that's that would be a benefit of Medicare for all as well. Is that, like you said, like just on a massive level, like just that one stress of life could just take that away because everybody knows that they have health care, you know what I'm saying, So they know that if something

does happen, they're not just teetering on the edge of collapsed. Yeah. And so that's why I even post the question of whether health care expansions and never fix the problem was ultimately when this study kind of proved, I would say earliest. It suggests, let's say, um that when you have less to worry about, your less deppressed. And I think this extends to multiple categories of social need um um, from

if you're less worried about housing, you're less suppressed. If you're less worried about where your food, you're less depressed.

If you're happier in your school environment, you're less suppressed, which speaks then to the need for community based solutions to get at the root crosses for why people are experiencing mental health problems, you know, issues about ravage therapy, rappist therapy, I mean, um, in the mean term, in the meantime, until we refund our social services so that people ain't so stressed about various things lead them to you know, poor coping of various kinds. We have hip

hop UM. I'm definitely found it super therapeutic to rap about various things I've been through, UM to both like sort of accept them as like to process them both, like just by writing them out on paper, but saying them out loud so many times in front of like audience is sort of like it's almost like exercising a demon, like, ha, y'all have that that's not you know, I'm casting you out. I find I find that like listening to shipped to

helps me identify stuff. Yeah, like hearing somebody else talking about their own ships, like it helps me identify oh you know what, I kind of feel that way too, And then you know that gets the mind going as to with what's the root of that feeling and where it's coming from and stuff like that. I mean, it's it's kind of cliche best, but you know for musicians like oh, then this is my therapy band, right, you know, It's like it's like I need it, but I don't

know it just it really is. It's like for any emotion too. It's it doesn't all necessarily have to be negative. But even getting out positive emotions and positive thoughts, whether it be in wrapping or listening to WRAP, I find it can be help helping and southing. And some scholars whore starting to take to wrap us therapy staying seriously UM, identifying a lot of what you know we're talking about right here, and thinking about how to UM use that

in more clinical settings to help folks UM. The University of Cambridge has supported a project known as the Hip Hop Psyche Initiative that aims to use hip hop to improve people's mental health and to address issues including stigma towards mental illness under the lack of diversity within the

psychiatric profession. In their article on the topic, the co founders gave the example of Juicy Meditorious b I G. Which he dedicated to all of the teachers that told me I'd never amount to nothing, to all the people that live above the building that I was hustling in front of of that called the police on me when I was just trying to make some money to feed my daughter, but goes on to describe how he has become successful psychogenesis when out with that drop, I couldn't pictures.

The co founders point out similarities with possible positive visual imagery technique investigated by Professor Emily Holmes group at the

University of Oxford UM. This technique is a form of therapy in which the patient is encouraged to use the power of their imagination to help them through difficult times, including things like depression or bipolar episodes, and so they then um seeing some of these similarities, I thought that by integrating hip hop into psychotherapies, they they could refine their tools as psychologists to make them more relevant to

their users. I mean this, this is that they could have used a bunch of examples for that same exact point other than you see. I mean the first popular successful wraps off literally is that the sugar Hill Gang Hop hivoted hip hop HIV. You don't stop, I got a linked in Continental you know what I'm saying. Yeah, Like those guys were wrapping about that before they had any of that stuff, and it was because it was

empowering to them, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And so like they're identifying these cops that we just organically have in the community and thinking about how to you know, perhaps augment them with other aspects of psychotherapy in order to help people in a culturally relevant way. Where it's like, Yo, sitting down on a couch in an office talk to some white lady in the lab coat does not sound

super healing to me. But when you bring these things in that do resonate with people, it helps make therapy more accessible. Now, is there any sort of like downside or negative to this, because I just I just kind of feel like if if the if the constant thing then is to attribute like material gain and wealth with you know, if that's the coke, and that's like all

it is. There's no other exploration of or I don't want to say there's no other exploration, but just in terms of like when when hip hop is dealing with like positive reinforcement on this level, it seems to be like Almo always in terms of like, well you could be rich and it would be better. Yeah. I mean, because of the society we live in, it is often tied to material gain, but I think you could um recast the use of positive visual imagery to really mean

lots of different things. Um. You know, maybe I called my mom the other day and it really made me feel good. Yeah, I went for a walk in the park and it was nope, play ball with the cat or you think about um, it was a good day.

What you're talking about? You know what he had for breakfast, dRIT around the city, didn't get shot as actually beautiful woman the good year blim and it reads ice cubes to pimp like just you can imagine all kinds of things if you have this freedom outlet in which to put those imaginings, um, if you have that sort of like um context in which it's relevant to like channel it as opposed to you know, just thinking in your

own head. And so I think I think that yes, it is shaped both by UM corporatism and music industry, which itself is shaped by living in a capitalist society. But it doesn't have to be like that. You can use the positive visual imagery to talk about any kind of stuff that you want to actualize. I imagine. So in closing out, if you or anyone you know is

struggling with suicidal thoughts and or distress. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available and that's AD to seven, three, eight to five, So forget But um, as we end day, let's circle back around to Mind Playing Tricks On Me. All right, we're gonna get into that. That's gonna be our music discussion. I know we had like music playing all throughout this motherfucker, but like this is gonna be the actual music discussion. So we'll be back with that

after the job. All right, we are back. I've been waiting to get in this dirt. No Dirt Dirt easily one of the most famous songs in hip hop history. We are talking about the nine song Mine Playing Tricks On Me by the Ghetto Boys Bushwick Bill, Scarface and Oh my goodness, why am I brain? Oh my brain fartingty No, you didn't, I forgot his name. Ghetto Boys Willie D. Really I'm tripping? All right? Um, So Mine's Playing Tricks is off their album We Can't be stopped.

The lyrics, like we said before, they describe mental anguish. The exhaustive life is a gangster including deal with symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, paranoia, suicidal and suicidal ideations and loneliness. It also samples hung up on My Baby by Isaac Hayes. Just to give you, you know, some little some stats about it. What else we got, oh, Rolling Stones ranked this as the fifth greatest hip hop song of all time. I have no idea how they

determine that, but it sounds right. That's good. I'll take it. Um in Scarface co Incidentally, I think we've discussed previously on the show Sink ran for Houston City Council. Yeah, he did. He did last year, maybe year before that. People don't know about Scarface is Scarface plays like every

instrument on some prince ship. Yeah, like he as a matter of fact, like if you were to go see a scar Face show, it's probably him in a jazz band with him playing the guitar, looking like good BB King and ship like for real, but some new every day. Something else I learned today is that Scarface's grandmother is credited for the song's title. Um told She told MTV. Um it's a strange way of how we came about it.

I come through the room and I think I was just kind of mumbled into myself and my lips and work into something. He said, Mama, what are you talking about? And I said, oh, nothing, My mom's just playing choice on me. And I didn't have no idea he was gonna go out and be making a song about it, but indeed he did so, Thanks Grandma Scarface. Man. I wish I could share those war stories about the conversations that me and my mom had that inspired me so because it's it's not as heart war as um Gangster

Rap may have been. This is a quote from NPR about song Gangster Rat. May have been America's nightmare in the eighties and nineties, but it was also America's creation. There's a post traumatic stress that comes along with being black in this country. It's almost part of your inheritance. And the feeling was compounded by the Crow era, by the War on drugs, by over policing, and nascart incarceration.

This was an arrow when it wasn't at all unusual to hear young black men referred to as an endangered species. And the worst of it, we were being told that we were the ones that should be feared the most. Day by day, it's more impossible to cope. I feel like I'm the one that's doing dope can't keep my steady hand because I'm nervous. Everyday morning I'm in service, praying for forgiveness and trying to find an exit out

the business. I know the Lord is looking at me, but yeah, yeah, and still it's hard for me to feel happy. Often drift when a drive haven't fatal, thoughts to suicide, bang and get it over with and then I'm very free. But that's bullshit. And he goes on to talk about how I think his daughter needs him, his family needs him. Um, but yeah, I mean a

lot of this exactly what they're describing. I would doubt that this is like the first rap song to deal with the subject matter, but it definitely was the first popular song that you know that I can recall hearing about the subject matter. And then again, you know, I think I was like only like five or six time or something like that. But yeah, I mean people talk about like the message I think as another one, but

this one really gets into like like deep characterization. The message is more like about the condition, and this is exactly exactly. And I mean at a time when you turn on you know, if you if you could just teleport yourself to back, then you know what I'm saying, if like you're turning on MTV and ship like that, you're seeing Snoop Dogg, G funk Era, Low Ride, you

know what I'm saying. Dr Dre and the chronic iced t N w Ay So for the ghetto boys not only to approach the subject matter from like a different angle and talk about it's like mental health impacts, but then also to be Southern mcs and doing that, that was big. That was big. Someone closing once again, if you're struggling out there, all hesitate to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline twenty four hours a day to seven, three,

eight to five. And I hope you know as well, you can find some therapy in the music Bush Wicked Bill, Rest in Peace, Rest in Peace, Brush wo Bill. You feel you feel like rapping? Yeah? I feel like Joel Joel. One of these days we're going to have to let Joel talk. Let's get the rapping. Uh. The taste of fame was the young caging of a parakeet that had dreamed of freedom, but it never made a choice before.

But they can have. Repeat is blended in the candic cabra juice, and it's a therapist when they're paying me to stamp at me. Here's to kick your kiddo. They could pitching Nichols for flipping the riddles, which is still a sick Oh. She could get end in contest and

win awards. Still want to stick a sword and in instaminute she got stressed, get an image on the billboards, demo liters in films court kind of ship A big should killed bill for its so she's not impressed for the building the film wor Jimmy rig Refridge waited hot mess swimming in the figure right indefinitely underwhelmed him to

buy the tagger Click ultimately hung itself. And you have been listening to Waiting on Reparations next week like subscribe to five Stars Piece Waiting on Reparations on the production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, check out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.