Taraji P. Henson is a queen for many reasons, one being her amazing job playing queen bee Cookie Lyon on
Empire, and another being that she's not afraid to talk about mental health. Taraji has been a huge advocate for mental wellness and treatment and she's even opened up about her battle with anxiety and depression.This week, Taraji is being honoured for her mental health advocacy at the Virtual 14th Annual HOPE Luncheon Seminar that will benefit the
Hope for Depression Research Foundation, which is a non-profit dedicated to advanced research on depression in the U.S. In her acceptance speech for the Community Ambassador of Hope Award, Taraji said she was "humbled" and noted that she was receiving the award for her work with the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, which was named after her father who experienced mental illness after his tour of duty in the Vietnam war and "returned broken.""The vision of my foundation is to eradicate the stigma around mental health in the Black community by breaking the silence and breaking the cycle of shame," Taraji said, before diving into her own story. She shared that her father passed away in 2006 and two years before that her son's father was murdered. "That's trauma, not only for myself but for my son. I was struggling with anxiety and depression and noticed how my son was also being impacted by this," she said. "I knew it was time to seek help, however when it was time to look for someone that I felt I could trust and my son could trust, it was like looking for a unicorn.""We don't talk about mental health in the Black community," Taraji added. She said that the community has been taught to "pray our problems away" or hold their problems in "out of fear of being labelled weak or inadequate." The
Empire star said she needed to find a therapist who was "culturally competent" so she and her son could trust them with their deepest vulnerabilities. "It's a different lens understanding a certain kind of empathy needed to address the traumatic daily stressers of simply being Black in America," she explained.She said that issues of “racism, mass incarceration, police brutality and inequality in health care and persistent exclusion from economic opportunities,” have created challenges and mistrust of American systems. Taraji said her main goal is to "normalize the way we talk about mental health by raising funds to train more culturally competent counsellors and make them available to Black people, especially Black men in need of therapy.""We need to ensure that we have enough soldiers to fight the battle for generations to come," Taraji added. She went on to explain that the number of Black children between the ages of 5 and 12 who have died by suicide "has doubled since the '90s." She said that depression needs to be discussed just like any other medical illness out there.[video_embed id='2050179']RELATED: Taraji P. Henson hosting a new show about mental health[/video_embed]The Golden Globe-winning actress was also honoured by the Boston-based Ruderman Family Foundation as the latest recipient of the Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion in October. "It’s OK to not be OK,” Taraji said. “Tell someone. Your vulnerability is actually your strength.”“When role models and influencers like Taraji are so vocal about their own experiences with mental illness, it has the potential to inspire millions of people to accept their own mental health issues and find healthy ways to address them,” said Jay Ruderman, president of the Ruderman Family Foundation.With the coronavirus pandemic complicating people’s mental health struggles, now is the time to look up to an advocate like Taraji. Her foundation has been helping people who have been affected by COVID-19 gain access to free online therapy.Henson will continue to shine a spotlight on mental wellness in her
new talk show for Facebook Watch, co-hosted with her longtime best friend, Tracie Jade Jenkins. The original series, titled
Peace of Mind with Taraji, is set to go into production later this year. Henson and Jenkins will interview celebrities, experts and everyday people about mental health issues, particularly those in the Black community, with each episode focusing on different mental health topics."The work Taraji has done in the mental health space is inspiring, and we're thrilled to have her come to our platform to educate and entertain around this incredibly important topic," said Mina Lefevre, Facebook Watch's head of development and programming.
[video_embed id='2071184']BEFORE YOU GO: Baby gets excited when he recognizes his grandmother on TV[/video_embed]
