Brandon Johnson: Building Community and Fighting Stigma

Brandon Johnson is a public health advisor at the Substance Abuse Mental Health Service Administration, SAMHSA, in the suicide prevention branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, where he oversees a number of suicide prevention grant programs. Outside of his work at SAMHSA, Brandon is the creator of the Black Mental Wellness Lounge, a YouTube channel dedicated to discussing black mental health and healing. 

In this episode, Brandon speaks to us outside of his role representing SAMHSA. Everything that he shares with us are his opinions, not those of the agency he works for.

Why he founded the Black Mental Wellness Lounge

[2:18] With the pandemic happening, it shifted all of our ways of life– the things that we could do, where we could go, how we felt about our own safety, how we felt about our own health, as well as the health of people that we cared about.

And at the same time that the pandemic was happening, there were a couple of really traumatizing incidents in the Black community. We had the death of George Floyd. We had Breonna Taylor's death, we had Ahmaud Arbery’s death. And this is all during the pandemic, right?

On cultural humility

[8:23] It’s taking that step further from cultural competence, which says, I am proficient enough and know enough about your culture to be able to service you, right? Cultural humility says that I will never know everything about your culture. That is not a realistic thing that I can do. However, what I want to know is how your culture impacts you.

On mental health advocacy at the local level

[12:32] We're the organizers, we’re the infrastructure, right? We are the place where plans can happen. We're the conveners, right? We can bring people together to work on topics and issues.

On compassion

[25:12] We can't expect ourselves to be perfect and exemplary every day. So we can't expect our kids to be, either. That's something even as a parent, with my 11 year old, eight year old, that I'm trying and learning myself in my parent’s journey.