LOUISVILLE, Ky (WDRB) – Everyone needs care for their mental health, but not everyone in Louisville has the same access to services.
But a Norton Healthcare therapist aims to help change that.
Jonathan White is a therapist at Norton Healthcare and hopes to be part of the solution. Born on the West Side of Louisville, he said he knows what it’s like to have flaws, but he hasn’t changed his love for the people he grew up with.
He said “I live at 40212 and I love it”. “I love my community. Through my lens, I don’t see the negativity everyone else sees, I see opportunity: an opportunity to invest and an opportunity to grow.”
Growing up, White said, he learned to understand the impact poverty can have on other aspects of one’s life, such as their mental health and ultimately the decisions they can make.
“I’ve always seen good people make one decision that has all these negative consequences,” he said. “I understood poverty and the impact of that. Also, I realized that systems aren’t always fair. I was seeing people who were designed to help who were actually doing something opposite.”
White said that was the reason he decided to become a therapist in the first place. He is now working with Norton Healthcare to help break down mental health barriers in minority communities.
“I had a 70-year-old patient who came into my office and was amazed that I was black. He looked around and said I had never seen a black person in the front seat,” White explained. “It helped break the stigmas with him and we started talking about how we had grown and he was able to open up and share some very personal things that he hadn’t shared with anyone.”
Kari Goff is 56 and has been seeing White for two years.
He said he first realized he needed to seek help after losing his mother during the pandemic and she began having suicidal thoughts.
“I always felt like I could fight through the storms on my own and I kind of finally realized that the things I was doing weren’t working,” Goff said. “I prayed and what was not and this led me to the counsel of grief.”
Goff said that people around him did not discuss mental health for most of his life, which led him to believe that because he was black, he could not experience suicidal thoughts. As he got older, Goff said he realized this wasn’t true and that mental health affects everyone.
“Brother – I’ve been talking to him,” said Gough. He told me bluntly: He was like, ‘Gee, there are excuses and there are reasons. I think you make a bunch of excuses to die but you have a lot of reasons to live. “
Together, Goff and White say they will continue to let others know that help is available, and that it’s okay to need it.
“We have to tear down some of these generational curses where a man should not weep, a man should not hold back before another man, a man should deal with his own stuff,” said Goff. “A lot of people will say I’m going to give it to God and pray for it. But when you pray, it should lead to action, and maybe some of that action God will say to you, you need to get some help.”
The pair said they hope to break down barriers by changing the idea of what is normal.
“Unfortunately,” White said, “sometimes poverty is very ingrained. I have patients who come to me and say, ‘I just deal with the normal things that black people do.'” “When I ask for an explanation they say, ‘Oh, there’s gun violence, I’ve seen a ton of people get shot, and my mom did this or my dad is in prison. These aren’t necessarily normal experiences. These are experiences that are unique to people in a particular neighborhood or socioeconomic background.'” “.
Making more minorities feel more comfortable discussing their mental health starts with changing the “idea of normality,” White said.
“Not all people of color are violent or aggressive or need to be in prison,” he said.
White also encourages parents to discuss mental health with their children, especially those who may have witnessed traumatic events.
“We defer a lot of time to ADHD when trauma is the underlying problem and trauma produces the same ADHD systems,” White said.
White, who is the father of a 9-year-old daughter, said he is trying to implement what he calls the GLAD technique in his parenting.
“What are you grateful for, what have you learned positively, what have you achieved and what have you smiled about?” White further explained the idea saying, “Now I’m building her emotional resilience before we go into something negative.”
White said changes in behavior are usually a key sign someone may need to seek help.
Anyone experiencing a mental health crisis can contact the National Suicide Hotline at any time by calling 988.
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