(Newswise) — EAST LANSING, Mich. – Mental health has become part of the wellness discussion in schools, workplaces and healthcare institutions.
In higher education, there is an increased focus on mental health as one component of wellness that helps students learn and persist through graduation. LeConte Dill, an associate professor of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University, has found that students are managing their health more holistically through creative expression, community building, therapy and other avenues.
Dill has worked and studied public health, health and social policy, and the intersection of arts and health for 25 years, and has been writing, publishing, and teaching poetry for even longer. During her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, she studied how creative expression and writing can be used to understand and represent health issues, particularly among urban youth of color.
A certified mindfulness instructor, Dill is focused on exploring ways her teaching and research intersect with the arts, humanities, and medical fields to value the wellness of all. Her latest funded project at Michigan State University involves working specifically with Black women working as students and staff to better understand how sharing physical space and time can support community building and wellness practices.
(Michigan State University photo)
Here, Dill discusses how a broader understanding of health may impact modern public health now and in the future.
How does mental health relate to overall health and wellness?
In the United States, mental health and public health are considered different. It’s not just about the framework, it’s about how government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels are run and funded.
I’ve worked in public health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and these agencies are very focused on physical health and illness. Mental health is handled by a separate department or division at the national, state, and county level, which fragments health and wellness within these agencies and within our own understanding. This fragmentation can lead to poorer health and wellness. When we think about the holistic health of people, we need to cut across these silos.
There are eight dimensions of health – emotional, mental, physical, economic, social, intellectual, environmental and occupational – that give us a more holistic framework. It is also important to think about how we can promote health as a collective and take responsibility for each other and for building our communities.
Why is mental health and wellness important, especially for Black women and girls?
As a Black woman, it can be depressing to hear all about health disparities, health inequalities, and negative statistics and reports.
The story is that Black people don’t go to therapy, or Black people don’t engage in mental health. It’s not without stigma and barriers to access, but some of the most marginalized populations are actually engaging with and demanding mental health support in a variety of ways.
For Black women and girls, trained therapists are very important, but there are other mental health professionals in the community too. It could be faith-based leaders, intergenerational “sister circles” of Black women who act as support groups and community leaders, and people who practice a broad range of health and wellness practices, cultural practices. People are working on it more than we talk about.
A lot of my research is with middle and high school students, and I also work closely with college students. They are reaching out and seeking mental health support right away. They’re engaging with and seeking different kinds of therapy than my generation and generations before that. I’m excited about this and I’m grateful for it.
What are some of the missing connections in the public health system?
Immediately before completing my Ph.D., I worked in the Department of Public Health for the City of Berkeley, California. Thirty percent of Berkeley’s black population has left Berkeley in the past 10 years, according to the release of the city’s health report. We talk about this casually when discussing social determinants of health, but we have no idea why these people left, where they went, or how it relates to health inequalities. I didn’t really ask if they were related.
My doctoral program in public health adopted a multidisciplinary approach, so I attended undergraduate classes that asked these questions. In class, we didn’t necessarily talk about health or the things that are connected to health, but rather the social and structural determinants that are talked about in the field of public health.
Sociology was theorizing about social factors, urban planning was creating interventions and conducting historical analysis, education was connecting change with public institutions and policies, and English was verbalizing social phenomena connected with personal experience.
By studying in these different departments, you learn that while public health sometimes talks about social determinants and health equity, it doesn’t necessarily include the framework or analysis of a deeper story. I was able to.
What kind of training is important for tomorrow’s healthcare workers?
Because of the structure of healthcare in the United States, psychologists are not in the same learning space as future physicians, social workers, or highly trained public health workers. That may be true, but schools are often not designed that way. And arguably they do not belong in the same learning space as urban planners, educators, historians, and artists. But then again, it could happen.
When we think about the connections between this learning, this teaching, and this training, it is clear that these divides prevent practitioners from deepening their learning and understanding for the benefit of the larger community.
When I teach in public health and medicine, I remind my students that we are telling and collecting stories all the time. Health histories, intake conversations — it’s storytelling, not just for patients and clients, but for health care workers too. It helps patients and community members remember the health practices they already practice, or the tools that have become touchstones of their families, their ancestors, their cultures. These are treasure troves of knowledge that don’t appear in traditional health textbooks.
In the medical industry, many practitioners practice art as a means of expression, but do not always connect it to their methods and practices in their offices, clinics, and waiting rooms. Art teaches us deeper histories as well as strategies for recovery, rehabilitation, and healing.
