Photo by Quinn Clark
Corey Fells, Lia Knox and Darius Smith host free group therapy to help normalize asking for mental health help.
Dr. Lia Knox grew up in an impoverished area on the North Side of Milwaukee; however, as a child, she didn’t realize she was poor. The strongest woman she knows is her mother who raised her and her younger brother. “No matter what I wanted to do, she would support me,” Knox says of her mother. “And she always has.”
On Saturday, Sep. 19, Knox waited for the 12 black women who signed up for Black Space, a free group therapy session, on the fourth floor of Nō Studios in Milwaukee. Soon, she’d facilitate the event organized to help normalize therapy and encourage mental wellness.
Knox had set her sights on being a veterinarian until her junior year at Riverside University High School. That year, Knox took a psychology course taught by a passionate teacher named Mr. Wild. He sent students out to talk to a variety of people in the community and to ask them about their lives. From that class on, Knox knew she wanted to be a psychologist. She went to college at Jackson State University and went on to pursue a doctorate degree in counseling psychology from Auburn University. Rather than just having one speciality, she made sure to study all areas of mental health to better help people of color. “Most of the people in my community were people of color,” Knox says. “I’m a person of color. People of color tend not to get the services that we need.”
Today, Knox is living her dream as a therapist. She’s lived in Illinois, Alabama and Mississippi and now, she’s back in Milwaukee. “The main reason I came back home was to be closer to my family and to be with this community,” Knox says. “I'm in love with Milwaukee. It is the best place I could ever be, and it was the best choice I could have ever made.”
Disparities in Mental Health Services
Knox looks back on the mental health issues that went untreated in her community. “Drug addiction, mental health, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, racism, discrimination,” she says. “From the time that I was born on-up the stories that I heard from my mother, my grandmother, my aunts, neighbors, people that I just met on the street or at the bus stop, that would all of a sudden just start crying and just tell me their stories.”
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She explains that black people are more often put into psychiatric wards or given medication without personalized help and further resources. She also says that a woman of color who expresses that she doesn’t feel well enough to work is likely to be written off as lazy or lying. “There should be training for therapists, doctors and front-line staff for diversity, equity and inclusion, making sure that people know of these disparities,” Knox says.
Knox says that black people with mental health issues are more likely to be stereotyped as “crazy” than a white person may be. She gives the example of an African American male speaking to himself in a grocery store. Knox says that instead of calling mental health services or assuming he needs professional help, people will simply call the police. “Which, of course, leads to, ‘Let’s get handcuffs,’” she continues. Rather than getting the help he needs, Knox explains, he will just be removed from the community and put in the penal system.
Fighting the Stigma
Darius Smith is one of the organizers of Black Space. The idea had been brewing in his head for about three months. He says he wants to normalize therapy and the process of asking for help because he never wants people to feel the same way he did when his mental health was at its lowest. “There’s a point in time where I was super depressed and I was on the point of thinking about killing myself, and I was like, ‘Jesus, I don't want to feel like that anymore,’” Smith says. “I don't want anybody else to feel like that.”
As a black man, Smith notices that black people have trouble addressing their trauma and tend to normalize bad things that happen to them. So, in order to execute his idea to provide free therapy, he contacted his friend, Corey Fells, who would tell Smith about how great his therapist was.
Fells’ therapist is Knox, who, Smith says, was the perfect fit for his idea. “I wanted somebody who cared about inclusivity and was up to date with what was going on in the world because you can get a therapist, but if they’re not understanding of what's actually going on in the world outside of their realm, they can kind of be out of touch, and Miss Knox is not out of touch,” he says. Knox voices Smith’s desire to normalize asking for help for one’s mental health struggles. “The normalization is the number one key, especially within our African-American community, because there is a huge stigma,” Knox says. “And my main goal is to definitely decrease and eliminate that stigma.”
Although Fells goes to therapy and is open about doing so, he acknowledges that many people in his community are not. “I come from a neighborhood where therapy is a very taboo thing and a lot of people don't really have the closest connection with the idea of therapy,” Fells says. “A lot of black people in my neighborhood seek religion or they seek some type of sports or some type of other avenue that suppresses their emotions, and they don't really get to be able to unpack a lot of things that they are faced with, like trauma or harm.”
Looking to the Future
When people walk away from Black Space, Knox hopes they feel heard and that they learn new coping mechanisms and techniques to deal with what they are going through. Knox hopes people think, “‘I'm going to get through this because I am a conqueror, I am resilient, I'm amazing and I have the tools and techniques to get through this. I just didn't know it, but I know it now.’”
Fells hopes that they are able to do more events like this one in the future. “Hopefully, God willing, this allows us to be able to do more ventures where people are able to experience different types of therapy,” Fells says.
September 19’s session was specifically for black women. On Oct. 3, black people who identify as LGBTQIA+ are welcome to attend, and the date for a session for black men is still to be determined. If you are interested in signing up, click here. Smith doesn’t want these to be Black Space’s only sessions. “Hopefully we can keep constantly doing it and let this be the opening door for people who can get inside of therapy to see, ‘Oh, it's not what I thought it was.’”
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