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Inside an auditorium in Wilkinsburg, six Black teenagers sat on stage in folding chairs and bared their souls.

The audience was filled with dozens of Black teens, parents, mental health professionals and community stakeholders, who gathered at the Hosanna House Thursday night for Western Pa.’s Black Youth Suicide Prevention Convening. Hosted by NAMI Keystone Pennsylvania — the state branch of the National Alliance of Mental Illness  —the nation's largest grassroots mental health organization, the event was the first of its kind in Pennsylvania.

The gathering aimed to promote healthy discourse around the heightened suicide rate among Black teens and highlight prevention strategies and solutions, in part by listening to adolescents themselves.

Research shows that the suicide rate among Black adolescents is increasing faster than other racial and ethnic groups. In 2022, the suicide rate among Black youth ages 10 to 19 surpassed that of their white peers and increased 54% since 2018, compared to a 17% decrease for white youth, according to federal data.

Nationwide, roughly 7 million Black Americans reported having a mental illness this year.

Common types of mental illness can include, but are not limited to, anxiety, bipolar, depressive, and substance-use disorders, and traumatic events that have lasting effects on one's mental health.

"This is an issue we can no longer afford to ignore as it disproportionately affects our children, our communities and our future," said Ikeya Craig-Swatson, a community engagement specialist at NAMI Keystone PA.

The panelists, Darrell Mason, Ross Owen Jr, Nia Dupree, Micah Lowery, Laila King, and Micah Dean, named racism and systemic inequities that Black Americans face as primary factors in their mental health struggles.

Mr. Owens said he believed that a leading problem among his peers was their internalization of the racism they experience in society.

"The problem is that it's not as blatant as it used to be, there's not as many laws that are so obviously racist, so now people [think] the problem's all gone," he said.

"And I think mentally that a lot of people are still suffering from believing really racist ideas about themselves and about their family and their communities," he said.

Ms. King said that because of generational trauma that plagues Black communities, there's a built-in mentality to appear stoic — which can make it difficult to speak candidly about their struggles, she said.

"I myself have struggled with mental health and, yes, Black people have a way of speaking about mental health, but where it kind of stops is how we address it," she said.

Mr. Owens echoed her sentiment and said he wants other adolescents to be aware they're not "less of an African American" if they're struggling with mental health disorders.

"If they realize they're not a rarity or a weirdo, that it's normal to be fighting these thoughts and these temptations, then I think that that would empower them to seek out help," he said.

First Published: September 26, 2024, 8:37 p.m.

Laura Esposito has covered public safety, gun violence and trauma for the Post-Gazette since September 2023. She holds a master's degree from Columbia Journalism School.

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