• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

RVA Mag

Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

Menu RVA Mag Logo
  • community
  • MUSIC
  • ART
  • EAT DRINK
  • GAYRVA
  • POLITICS
  • PHOTO
  • EVENTS
  • MAGAZINE
RVA Mag Logo
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Sponsors

One Month After Bourdain’s Death, We Still Won’t Talk About Mental Health

Ash Griffith | July 10, 2018

Topics: Anthony Bourdain, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, depression, health care, mental health, restaurants, suicide

I could just barely reach our countertop when my father started teaching me how to cook. Chef celebrity culture quickly became a thing in the late 90s, and my father used it to his advantage to teach me how to cook what we saw on our television. We started working on proper knife skills after we read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential for the first time in 2000.

Bourdain was forever brutally honest about his struggles with addiction, and never sugar coated his experiences. As a chef who worked with immigrants, he was vocal about their rights, and openly acknowledged that the Latinx community was the physical backbone of the service and hospitality industries. Kitchen Confidential not only made him a household name, but helped tear down what he coined “kitchen bro culture” and reformed kitchen procedures in restaurants.

In his later years he became an extremely vocal ally to the #MeToo movement by refusing to just stand idly by colleagues, such as Mario Batali, who were called out on their despicable behavior. He demanded other men be better allies to women, while simultaneously dissecting his own role and how he himself could be a better ally to women.

He was a man who grew up with privilege and was aware of it, but understood that he could and should use it to others’ advantage. He made it his mission to find the everyman and eat where he ate, while getting to know him better and ask about his life and how he saw the world. He was one of the few people who made it a point to intentionally go to Muslim communities with the purpose of tearing down stereotypes Americans kept. He knew that fear of the unknown was the most dangerous of all.

Bourdain lived to start conversations.

It’s darkly appropriate that as a final goodbye, Bourdain also started one last conversation. Will America ever take mental health seriously? I want to be positive and say maybe one day, but I’m also the pessimist in the room who vehemently and loudly argues otherwise, with a scowl etched across her face.

Like Bourdain, celebrated fashion designer Kate Spade passed the same week and the social media outreach contained the usual platitudes.

“Well, you know you can all talk to me! Just reach out!”

“Make sure you call a hotline!”

“If you only said something!”

It all regurgitates the same very dangerous and unhelpful trend of victim blaming that our culture has become disgustingly comfortable with. The blame is always shifted onto the victim instead of anywhere (not anyone) else. For years and years, it was focused on the rhetoric that demonized these people as selfish instead of clearly in need of help.

Mental health is a complicated, enigmatic concept. We’re told from the start that it’s okay to be vulnerable, to reach out for help or reassurance, but as soon as you do, you’re put down for being “weak” or “needy”.

Human beings need help sometimes. A lot of the time.

We struggle to accept that sometimes, horrible things happen. We’re quicker to cherry pick things that we think we can argue are more in our realm of control, like addictions or depression and anxiety. Any viral Facebook meme will tell you that the key to curing depression is a walk in the park and a baby corgi. Unfortunately it isn’t that simple nor easily wrapped up.

If someone tells you they have cancer, they are quicker to be supported and have people actively reach out to check on their well-being. If someone tells you they have depression, the reach out is a lot more sporadic, if at all, and sometimes met with a, “Well, I’m here if you need something.” We tend to look at things like depression as things we can control, so when people who supposedly “have it all” end their life, it is usually met with anger or confusion, whereas if they had cancer, it would have been nothing but sadness.

Bourdain was also proof that despite what we choose to believe, depression and addiction are not prejudiced. Mental illness doesn’t care if you are rich or poor, male or female, or where you are, it just grabs you. It just holds on like a demon on your back sinking its claws into your flesh. It just holds on.

The phrase that gets listlessly thrown around is, “We need to do better.” We need to stop saying it and just do it, because at this point, the phrase means nothing. We have to stop saying things and actively be better for our friends, family, and peers. And we have to do so much more than just obligatory check ins.

We live in a society where we refuse to allow people to be vulnerable. The gut reaction and answer when someone asks, “Hey, you doing okay?” is,“Yeah, I’m fine.” We’re not fine, though.

The only way to really support each other is by forming actual, meaningful relationships with the people around you. If we form these true connections with each other, we’ll find that we get actual, honest, bloody answers. The next time someone asks how we’re doing, we might actually respond with the phrase we so desperately want to use: “You know, not that great. Can we talk about it?”

It’s not enough anymore to be half-assed allies to each other in order to gain metaphorical gold stars and brownie points with each other. We’re losing each other and we have to make it stop. We have to shut down the stigma around mental illness, and we have to start doing it now.

In 2016, over 45,000 suicides occurred in the United States, was double the number of homicides that year. The number is significantly more staggering in rural states, such as North Dakota, where the number rose to 57 percent. Nevada, however, had record a decline of 1 percent.

Suicide is now the tenth leading cause of death overall in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“I think this gets back to what do we need to be teaching people — how to manage breakups, job stresses,” said Christine Moutier, medical director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in an interview with The Washington Post. “What are we doing as a nation to help people to manage these things? Because anybody can experience those stresses. Anybody.”

Moutier maintained that suicide can be addressed, if we can end the stigma around mental health. “If you think of [suicide] as other leading causes of death, like AIDS and cancer, with the public health approach, mortality rates decline,” Moutier said. “We know that same approach can work with suicide.”

With all that said, we may be at least on the right track. This past Sunday, New York and Virginia were the first two states to require mental health education in schools. Virginia’s law will require that mental health education be included in the ninth and tenth grade physical education and health curricula.

Virginia Senator Creigh Deeds is who we have to thank for sponsoring Virginia’s bill. He was inspired by listening to a presentation by Albemarle County high schoolers in 2017, and the death of his son, Gus Deeds. Gus died by suicide in 2013 after he was released by a hospital because there were no open psychiatric beds anywhere in the western part of the state.

“I was impressed by [the high schoolers’] thoughtfulness, because a lot of these young people had seen bullying. They had seen depression. They had seen classmates that had died by suicide,” Deeds said in an interview with CNN. “It’s part of tearing down the stigma and providing some equality with those that struggle with mental health.”

Deeds’ legislation is a good start, but it won’t be enough on its own. Talking about suicide and mental illness is difficult, but we can’t get past the stigma if we don’t. I don’t have all of the answers and I don’t know anyone who does, but what I do know is that we need to start doing better for ourselves, and for each other.

Fighting Fire: Life After a Herpes Diagnosis

Talya Faggart | June 25, 2018

Topics: Center for Disease Control and Prevention, richmond, Sexually transmitted diseases, STD

Statistics are just statistics until they aren’t, especially when you are young and feel invincible.

“I was just like, ‘Oh, it’s not gonna happen to me,’” said Pilar Monroe, when talking about the possibility of getting an STD. Monroe felt in control of all aspects of her life, yet one quick turn of events saw her lose that control, and she suddenly had to redefine her identity and status.

“Something wasn’t going right down there,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh it’s fine, I trust this person. Everything’s great. No need to worry about it.’”

Initially, she didn’t want to get checked by a doctor. When she decided she had to, even her doctors weren’t sure what her diagnosis was, but they decided to medicate her anyway. One week later, she received the phone call from the clinic telling her to check her email–an email that would permanently affect her life.

Monroe was told she tested positive for Herpes Simplex: Virus Type 1, commonly referred to as HSV-1. She had contracted the STD through a past monogamous partnership.

Yet the physical discomfort from the initial outbreak is only one aspect of living with this STD; the other is the inner struggle that Monroe has about herself, becoming more contentious as shame began to weigh on her.

Her process of grieving had begun.

Overcoming had always been a thing [for me],” she said, when discussing how to be a young woman and cope with herpes. “I was just tired of overcoming another thing. 

Prior to contracting herpes, Monroe’s negative connotations about the virus were due to its surrounding stigmas. This includes public misconceptions about what herpes actually is. HSV-1 causes every day cold sores, which is form of oral herpes, yet many distinguish it differently from genital herpes, which the Center for Disease Control (CDC) says can be caused by both the HSV-1 and HSV-2 virus.

Most people are unaware that someone with oral herpes can give someone genital herpes. The CDC says that one out of six people aged 14 to 49 have genital herpes. It’s primarily transmitted through having anal, oral, or vaginal sex with someone who has the disease.

A person can get infected by coming into contact with the skin around the genital area by someone who has the infection, an open sore, or the saliva of someone with oral herpes. A person can also get it through the genital secretions of someone with genital herpes.

Using condoms can lower the chance of transmission, but does not completely remove the risk, as condoms don’t protect the whole genital region. Transmission is still possible, even if someone doesn’t have any symptoms. There is no cure for the virus, but symptoms are treatable.

During the aftermath of her diagnosis, Monroe decided on a process of self-education, studying up on disease statistics, and learning from the personal experiences of others. Monroe watched a Ted Talk featuring Ella Dawson, a woman who was diagnosed with genital herpes days before her 21st birthday. Dawson fought the stigmas that come with having an STD by speaking out on own experiences. Monroe would soon realize that she had more in common with Dawson than just a diagnosis.

As the reality of her positive status settled in, Monroe wanted to feel empowered again. By the turn of the New Year , she decided that she was tired of being upset and started leaning on her faith to see her through the healing process. This included rebuilding her confidence.

“I started telling people like, ‘Oh I have this.’ I would bring it up casually,” she said. She told only a couple friends at first, then told her coworkers. “[Eventually], I would talk about it to a friend in front of other people, as if it were not a big deal.”

But it was never going to be that easy–some responded to her announcement with apprehension.

“That’s the whole issue I have,” said Monroe. “People are not upfront and straightforward about it. They want to tiptoe around it and I’m like, ‘Yeah it’s here.’ I’m going to make you uncomfortable because you need to be uncomfortable.”

Dating, on the other hand, turned into a much bigger hurdle. She wasn’t sure how to tell a potential partner, or how long she could wait before telling them.

“That was really difficult just because I was so scared,” she said. “I’m going to have to tell this person that I have this thing, and they’re not going to want to be with me anymore. How long should I wait? Should I tell them initially? Should I wait until [after] a couple dates? They’re going to wonder why I won’t have sex with them.”

Monroe waited four months before telling him.

“It ended up working out,” she said. “I ended up telling someone and it’s perfectly fine now. I think in telling him and him being okay with it helped me gain confidence and just being open about it. I didn’t think it would happen so soon. I thought I would have to wait years to even find someone that’s okay with it.”

People tend to disclose their STD status when they feel comfortable, whether it’s the moment they meet someone or months later. Regardless of the sexual pace one chooses, it’s always important disclose STD status before any sexual interaction.

Since being open about her diagnosis, many have reached out to her for help.

There are so many people who have this or other STDs and they feel silenced about it,” she said. “The shame is something they all had in common.

Being vulnerable was something Monroe has battled with and says her faith helped give her the strength to post her STD status on her Instagram. The post was not only to inform others of her experience, but also to help de-stigmatize anyone with STDs. Instead of questioning why it happened to her, she wanted to use her diagnosis to positively impact others through being transparent.

“Posting it brought me a large sense of peace, because it made me feel like I had fulfilled a purpose that was deep in my soul,” she said.

Clinics in the Richmond area like Planned Parenthood and the Health Brigade offer services for those diagnosed with the STD. Dominique Graves is a case manager and counselor at the Health Brigade. He says that those who are tested come in because they are having  an outbreak.

“Most people that have herpes wouldn’t know they have it,” he said. “A lot of people don’t get an outbreak.”

Although herpes is not a nationally reportable infection, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) show that prevalence of HSV-1 & HSV-2 has decreased from 1999 to 2000 and 2015 to 2016. Of those aged 14 to 49, HSV-1 is prevalent in 47.8 percent and HSV-2 is prevalent in 11.9 percent based on the 2015-2016 survey.

After someone is diagnosed, Graves says treatment is the first step to minimize the likelihood of spreading through sexual contact. He also talks to them about how to tell their sexual partners their STD status and if their partners are at risk.

Regardless of having this kind of STD, Monroe wanted to emphasize what is really important: self love, whatever your status is.

“You’re still lovable,” she said. “You can still live a normal life. There’s hope.”

sidebar

sidebar-alt

Copyright © 2021 · RVA Magazine on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Close

    Event Details

    Please fill out the form below to suggest an event to us. We will get back to you with further information.


    OR Free Event

    CONTACT: [email protected]