Amid Social Upheaval and COVID-19, Black Women Create Their Own Health Care Support Networks

In early May, a group of 20 Black mothers in rural Mississippi logged onto a virtual group therapy session to discuss the immense, compounding pressures of providing for their families and caring for their children during a global pandemic and historic unemployment crisis. It was the first time any of them had talked to a traditional mental health counselor, and the results were cathartic. “It’s important that we refuel — to be able to be better parents, to be able to be better daughters, to be better sisters and mothers,” says Dr. Erica Thompson, the executive director of Magnolia Medical Foundation, the community health nonprofit that ran the program. Magnolia Medical Foundation’s pilot series was designed to address the unique challenges facing Black mothers in recent months as they navigate a pandemic that has disproportionately claimed Black lives, an unemployment crisis that has exposed the failures of the American social safety net, and the explosion of a national movement combatting the systemic violence perpetrated against Black people. Magnolia Medical Foundation’s program invited mothers to participate in therapy sessions virtually, via computers or phones, and then stop at a drive-through to pick up information about mindfulness and coping mechanisms, as well as other more tangible resources, like food, cleaning supplies and face masks. “This allowed them to place those questions that they had, and to be able to pick up r...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news