Pastor Michael Walrond Jr. is making a tremendous stride towards destigmatizing mental illness in the black community by providing free mental health services to Harlem residents.
The H.O.P.E. Center, which stands for Healing On Purpose and Evolving, opened on Dec. 15 and is an extension of First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York where Walrond serves as a senior pastor.
Although the church has previously provided informal counseling services to its members, Walrond, who is black, said he wanted to expand on the mental health services offered in the community.
“There’s a normalization of trauma in this community,” Walrond told DNAinfo. “We don’t engage it, we don’t address it.”
But H.O.P.E. plans to reverse this cycle of ignoring the personal battles some members of the community have been enduring. Their website describes the work of their clinicians, in part, as using “evidenced based therapeutic modalities to support a variety of daily living challenges ranging from depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, trauma, to sexual abuse and domestic violence, as well as bereavement and marriage/family guidance.”
Walrond, who has shared his battles with depression during sermons at First Corinthian, said he is well aware of the stigma tied to mental health care in black communities.
He said that some people in the black community hesitate to seek out mental health resources for fear of being called “crazy.”