Healing the 'Invisible Ache' behind the suicide crisis among Black men and boys (Tonya Mosley; Fresh Air podcast)

Actor Courtney B. Vance was a young actor on Broadway in the 1990s when he received a call from his mother that would tear his world apart: His father was dead, she said, by suicide. Years later, Vance's godson, a promising college student, would also die by suicide.

In the wake of these devastating losses, Vance has focused on peeling back the layers of both his father's pain and his own struggles as a Black man in America. In a new book, The Invisible Ache, Vance and psychologist Robin L. Smith (who often goes by Dr. Robin) explore the trauma unique to Black men and boys, and address what they see as an urgent need to change the conversation about mental health.

"[With] Black boys and Black men, the rates of suicide is increasing," Smith says. "The rate is accelerating faster than any other group in the country, in the United States. And so we have to ask why."

Smith points to a modern culture of isolation and loneliness, which the surgeon general has referred to as a public health emergency. But, she adds, those factors are compounded for Black men and boys.

"If we then put race and racism with isolation and loneliness, surely we understand that Black boys and Black men are up against historical trauma as well as current-day trauma," Smith says.

Though the book is focused on the mental health of Black boys and men, Vance says the issue has universal implications: "We are all interconnected. ... My ache is your ache. If I'm aching, [and] you [are] clutching your purse as I walk by, you're aching. You're as much in a prison as I am," he says.
Interview: 

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/11/15/1213089999/courtney-b-vance-robin-l-smith-black-men-mental-health-invisible-ache