How COVID-19 has impacted the mental health of LGBTQ and BIPOC individuals
by Elizabeth Christman, Gay City Intern
Our amazing guest columnist/intern Izzy Christman spoke with one of Seattle’s leading therapists Mx. Rian Roberson, a QTPOC individual born in the Northwest.
Tell us about you.
Growing up a queer, black-white biracial person in predominantly white Seattle, diversity has always been a dominant theme in my life. I’ve always been curious about people — how they work and why. As an adult, that curiosity evolved into a passion for social justice and the desire to thoroughly explore my many intersecting identities.
How has COVID-19 impacted members of marginalized identities (LGBTQ+, BIPOC)?
For that, I will start with some numbers. This was hard for me to compute initially but one of the figures I’m working with is 10 percent of Black have died of COVID, and that number is so wildly out of proportion with the rest of the population. So it’s pretty much a guarantee that any Black person I work with knows someone who has been infected. So, specific to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and queer communities, with smaller representation, especially in places like the northwest, we tend to rely really heavily on building connections with chosen family, that’s especially important for queer communities. And that’s…with lockdown, we’ve lost access to those places.
There’s no risk associated with spending time with people who make us feel like our best selves. And not all of us are great at utilizing the webs so stay in contact. So if we add that and look at its intersectionality, and consider that People of Color have lost more, are more likely to work in service jobs that don’t afford them the luxury of working from home, who are also dealing with the isolation associated with queer BIPOC communities, those with privilege are their customers.
I think about how so many of my clients work in service, so they have to confront white people who deny the reality of COVID when they are the ones who are impacted the most in multiple different ways. It’s wild. That’s horrifying that that’s a real thing. On top of everything, if that wasn’t enough, another thing to look at is that there are so many barriers between BIPOC and access to therapy. So that’s the one thing that might be helpful. I‘ll just name a few because there are many: first of all, 86% of therapists are white, only 5% are black, most therapists cost on average $150 an hour, it can be incredibly hard to find a therapist who represents you, your diverse identities, insurance companies get to decide if your issues constitute real problems, most therapists of color are full, and lastly, there is substantial stigma around seeking outside help for mental health in the black community based on a long-standing history of blacks being medically mistreated or tortured by the health industry. And religion. Like I said, there’s a lot of reasons.
Has the stigma surrounding mental health been changed at all because of COVID-19?
Nope. Not from what I have witnessed. I haven’t witnessed a positive shift. I have no evidence of a change. And that makes me really nervous because it’s my opinion that the vast majority of us will need some help in healing from the trauma of over a year of lockdown and the deaths of hundreds of thousands. It just feels like this should be a really clear example of the kind of thing we all need help for. One of the most common reasons a person might seek therapy outside of having a diagnosis of some kind is to simply help people adjust to change. So, you may be familiar with the diagnosis of adjustment disorder (I am not). That is something that is often used to express that a person needs help to transition from one life experience to another or recovering from a key trauma. The way I see the future it seems very likely most of us will be dealing with some kind of difficulty transitioning to what life is after this. So, my hope would be that people will be open to receiving help to make that transition easier. More positive. Faster. POSSIBLE. A THING.
How has COVID-19 impacted you?
So, addressing your question, from a personal level, I’ve had the opportunity to be a witness to a widespread number of Americans impacted by the virus in that I work with marginalized people and people of privilege. And my personal experience has erred on the side of privilege in that I’ve been able to continue my work without interruption to my business/supporting my clients from the safety of my home without having to risk infection. It’s also felt like a compromise because I’ve prioritized having a career where I get to be in person with people which is my primary way of being in a relationship. But relatively I recognize my privilege. I’ve also haven’t hurt for income as the national need for mental health has skyrocketed. And I’ve been turning people away because the need is so high. So I consider that mixed privilege. Because I’ve made the most I’ve ever made but I’ve been the most stressed I’ve ever been. It’s worth addressing that it’s really hard to be living through an active crisis while supporting others who are in the same crisis, so if we had the intersectional layers of race, socioeconomic status, sexual id, gender ids, and considering that I work with marginalized people as a marginalized person, I’m trying to exist in a pandemic with a lot of vulnerability that’s constantly activated. So the other issue that came up is that my preferred means of self-care and self-soothing involves close contact with relationships. So as I was dealing with some of the hardest work of my life, I’ve had to come up with new ways of caring for myself. It’s felt like being in survival mode to a degree that is remarkable even for me. 2020 was a new level of that. And the work I’m doing right now is to try to not get so stuck in my own experience, but I kind of lose the point in history. This is all happening for a reason. Human beings are essentially teens who are smart and not wise and the reason this pandemic got as bad as it did is because of really unwise decisions we made as a culture. And that’s not the end of the story, but it’s the part of the story we’re in at this moment.
Do you have any tools or recommendations for those whose mental health has been negatively impacted during the pandemic?
I wanna let you know that that’s AN OPTION. I don’t want to take any options off your plate. DISCLAIMER: GENERAL ADVICE ONLY. One of the best ways we can help regulate our emotions and energy during times of stress is to stick to a schedule and routine. This would include waking and sleeping at the same time every night, trying to exercise at the same time of day, eating your meals at the same time of day, and to promote a feeling of homeostasis in your body even if the world is doing something different. An approach to this that I like to do is to be less rigid about when these windows happen. So for example, I have acclimated to a very late sleep window but I’m able to sustain it consistently and so the work is to not judge myself for not being perfect because it’s good enough to do consistently. Just being aware of what our social needs are and practicing asking for what we need. And the very last thing, because this is general, trying not to be too hard on yourself for not knowing how to do this perfectly. Unless you’re over 100, you haven’t had the experience of knowing how to survive a global pandemic to this degree. So I invite people to let go of perfection and accept acceptable.
How do you de-stress?
I’ll say that my therapist has been encouraging me to invest in hobbies that have no purpose other than my own enjoyment. Because I have a habit of getting fixated on output all the time. So I manage to find an activity that helps me relieve my stress while literally only benefiting me. Me: like the lightsaber. It’s a freestyle staff. It’s an extension of my martial arts practice but it’s really just for flare and for my own enjoyment. I get to do it at home in th3e comfort of my house, and it’s also just like a giant fidget spinner. Twirling a big stick is fun, I find it very soothing, and I can do it almost any time I need to.
Need Additional Resources?
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