May is Mental Health Awareness Month, created to help destigmatize mental illness and shed light on proper care. Although it has existed since 1949, the past decade has made it clear that mental health has entered the chat. We use words like gaslighting, trauma bonding, and OCD (often incorrectly) in casual conversations; we take “mental health” sick days at work. Though there’s still a long way to go. Even with so much progress, the stigmas persist, and Dr. Raquel Martin is doing her part to challenge them.

“Just as a people, we have very much been taught to keep to ourselves just for safety, and that was justified. There weren't many people that looked like us within the medical system, and for a time, it very much could have been a trap,” Martin says.

Known for her sage advice and for sharing her bold point of view online, the Philly native has garnered a massive following across social media. She is a licensed clinical psychologist, a professor at Tennessee State University, and an advocate for Black mental health. Her work involves a mix of clinical psychology, Black mental health, liberation psychology, research, workshops, speaking, and curriculum development.

Stigmas aside, when asked for her advice on how we can all figure out whether or not therapy is the move, she kept it simple.

“I just tell people to ask themselves questions: ‘Are you happy with your relationships with others or with yourselves? Are you happy with the way you respond to conflict?’ she says. Though the kicker is, it’s not so much conflict that humans have a problem with it is “poor conflict resolution,” she stresses.

Self-interrogation is key, and it starts with asking yourself even the most basic questions, she says. Like, for example, are you happy? How are you doing in your daily functioning when it comes to capacity? Do you feel exhausted by the end of the day? Do you wake up dreaming about sleep? Do you feel hopelessness when it comes to the world?

It’s questions like these that can push us toward getting the help we need.

Black Men and Masculinity

Though Martin says the conversation around mental health cannot stop at the individual. In April, a swell of discussions around mental health, Black men, and masculinity arose after several Black women and children were slain at the hands of their partners (see: Nancy Metayer Bowen, Dr. Cerina Fairfax, Pastor Tammy McCollum, and the mass shooting in Shreveport).  

If you ask Martin, conversations around Black men and the need to destigmatize mental health must go beyond encouragement and into the structures that shape behavior. “When we talk about the whole aspect of masculinity and mental health for Black men, we also have to understand that it's not just an individual behavior thing,” she says. It’s a survival technique that has been taught in a cultural climate that punishes vulnerability in Black men and rewards emotional control.

“Many Black men have been taught that it is not safe to feel, and that stoicism is often rewarded while vulnerability is punished. It’s very much like a learned protection strategy,” she says.

She also connected that pressure to control, saying mental health conversations around Black men and violence cannot stop at individual therapy. “We can’t talk about Black women being hurt or killed and talk solely about mental health and not talk about power,” Martin said. For her, the answer is part treatment, part community intervention, and part honest conversations about masculinity, dominance, and safety.

Beyond The Couch

However, when it comes to Black mental health, therapy is just one tool of many forms of wellness and care; it’s not the whole answer. “I'm a clinical psychologist, but I’ll be the first to say that therapy does not have a monopoly on healing,” she says. “

“So whether it is therapy or it’s mutual aid, or your path to healing involves spiritualism or activism, community is so important,” she says.

That broad approach is part of why Martin pushes people to think beyond a narrow definition of care. She added that we often need “access to mental health information that centers us,” because generalized advice often misses what Black people are actually dealing with.

The need for that kind of culturally grounded care is proven by the numbers. In 2024, Black/African American adults were 36% less likely than U.S. adults overall to have received mental health treatment in the past year, according to the U.S. Office of Minority Health. The same source says Black adults were 14.7% likely to receive mental health treatment in 2024, while 20.9% experienced any mental illness and 12.2% experienced serious psychological distress.

Martin said that the access problem is not just about insurance or cost. It is also about whether a therapist understands racism, identity, and the everyday stressors shaping a patient’s life. She encourages people to ask about a clinician’s experience with racism’s impact on mental health during first consultations, and she recommends those 20- to 30-minute consultation calls as a kind of “therapy sample.”

She also stressed that a bad fit does not mean therapy is not for you. “I went with my psychologist for years, but she was not the first psychologist I worked with,” Martin said. “Their vibes were just very different, and they had all the expertise, and they had all the credentials, but it just didn’t vibe with my style as a human.”

Her Village

When it comes to Martin and her own mental health, she admits that in addition to having her own therapist, she’s quick to give credit to her own support system. “I’m fortunate to have a huge support system when it comes down to it. My husband is fantastic,” she says, calling out his chill demeanor, which balances out her self-described “big personality.”  

She also has a group of girlfriends whom she affectionately calls her “board of executives.”

“That’s what I call my girls, because the problem-solving gets done, whether it's like on a group call or while we’re together walking through TJ Maxx.”

​Therapists, they’re just like us.

For more mental health resources, click here.