July is Minority Mental Health Awareness Month.
Mental illness affects millions of people across the
United States,
regardless of race, sexuality, or upbringing,
impacting every aspect of their lives.
Our next guest knows this all too well.
Larry Johnson was a star running back
for the Miami Dolphins,
but run-ins with the law and domestic violence issues
ended his storied career.
As he tried to deal with anger issues,
he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Unlike Johnson, many people never get help.
In fact, a whopping 80% of African Americans and Hispanics,
suffering from some sort of mental health condition,
receive no treatment at all.
When it comes to Asian Americans,
only one-third dealing with a mental illness,
receive treatment.
Here to share more is former Miami Dolphins running back,
Larry Johnson, now working with the non-profit,
The Motivational Edge as Chairman of Edge Ambassadors.
Carlos Larrauri, who sits on the Board of Directors
for the National Alliance on Mental Illness
in Miami Dade.
Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us.
Larrauri, right?
- Yes ma'am.
- I've been practicing that.
Thank you both for being here.
- [Carlos] Pleasure.
- Larry, let's dive in with you.
Your past is no mystery, it's no surprise.
It's been tumultuous.
You had a storied career as a football player,
and had a lot of issues when it came to
domestic violence, violence against girlfriends.
You've been on probation.
Take us through that difficult time.
At what point in your life,
as all of this was unfolding,
did you say to yourself, "This has to stop."
or, "I need help."
Take us through that time.
- When I got deep into my career,
when I was starting getting a little bit more successful,
I was able to
hold those demons at bay.
I was able to go home,
and not be able to worry about anything.
What I suffered from was to be able to
check my emotions, and not bring them home with me.
What happened was, more and more,
going through my career, I was getting difficult.
Practices weren't going well,
games weren't going well,
the personnel wasn't going well.
I would take all those problems home with me,
and when I didn't have anybody or anybody to reach out to
to talk to,
I would drink, I would go out,
so everything that happened to me would be a result
of a day's worth, or a week's worth of frustration,
and it would come out on whoever was with me
by the end of the night.
It always happened to be my girlfriends
or anybody who was a friend to me,
was gonna have to deal with my anger and my issues,
based on me not being able to contain myself
long enough to find a healthier outlet,
to deal with the struggles of going through NFL career,
and coming to the end of that NFL career,
and obviously having my first child.
A lot of that's changed,
only because of my first child.
It was awakening when she could understand what I would say.
She would understand what I would do.
She would know when I would leave and not come back.
She would understand those things,
and that's when I really changed for me,
was the fact that I now have to be responsible for
another human being,
and I have to set an example that's
not like the one that I had came out of.
Which was just playing football,
being the rowdiest guy,
and being the guy that's always mad on the football field,
and being able to take care of a beautiful little girl.
You obviously had to have a different mental approach to it.
- At one point,
you were diagnosed with bipolar disorder, correct?
- Yes.
- Did that help you explain
to yourself a lot of your behavior
and what it stemmed from?
- I had to literally ...
When I was done with football,
I went through a real depression spiral,
and that's where it came from,
was the fact that, what am I gonna do now?
Where am I gonna put all this energy at?
Where am I gonna put everything that's who I am,
where do I put it at now?
I can't just put it on the football field,
'cause that's what my excuse was.
I think once I
took years off from football,
and goin' to see therapists, goin' to see psychiatrists,
even the League tried to help me out
by putting me into a program.
I think, looking back and looking into myself deeply,
I had to understand that there was something
really really wrong with how I
choose to use anger
to get over things.
That's what I was doing.
I was using anger and fear and self-defense mechanisms,
toxic vices to make an excuse for why I am the way I am,
and kinda laughed about it.
I'll play the bad boy role, and be fun doin' it.
When I kept gettin' arrested,
I had to look at look, I'm gonna miss the best years
of my daughter's life, being locked up
every single time that I use alcohol,
or the clubs or night life to cope with
what I was dealing with.
- Before we talk about the Motivational Edge,
which is what you're involved in now,
and I think you're putting a lot of your energy into
doing something positive,
Carlos, let's talk about the work that you do
at NAMI, and how important it is right now
to highlight that there are minorities our there
who are suffering from mental illness,
who aren't getting the help that they need.
- Unfortunately, that's right.
I'm with NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
We're the largest grassroots advocacy organization
that helps build better lives for individuals
with mental health issues and their families.
We know that mental illnesses are very common.
They affect one out of five Americans.
50% of them present before the age of 14.
Yet, we also know that African Americans
and Hispanics like myself often receive care
at less than half the rate of whites.
There's a huge discrepancy between
these mental health issues, how prevalent are,
and people seeking care and services for them.
- Why do you think minorities aren't getting the help
that they need?
Is it cultural?
Larry, you might even be able to speak to this as well.
Is it one of those things that people just
don't wanna talk about?
Or there just aren't services in their community?
What is it?
- Sure, it's, realistically speaking, a combination of both.
On the cultural side of it,
I mean, look, it's very hard to face having a
mental health issue and we often have misconceptions
and misunderstanding, is it drug use?
Is it poor parenting?
All that is scientifically untruth,
so there are cultural barriers.
There's also systemic barriers.
There is a system that discriminates against
individuals with mental health issues,
and they often get stuck in the system.
Stuck in emergency rooms and stuck in jail.
We have cultural issues,
and we need people to be open about it and talk about
these mental health issues,
and we also need to fix a broken mental health system.
When people wanna seek care, they can easily access it.
- I think part of what you're doing here
is the awareness to let people know,
we're here, and you can seek us out,
if you feel that you need that extra help, correct?
- That's right.
Hey, it's okay man.
Mental health issues are quite common.
They happen.
It's okay to seek help, and I have to commend my friend
Larry for the courage that it takes to say,
"Hey man, I need help."
and life goes on.
- Let's talk about Motivational Edge.
Tell us all about it, and how it's helping
youth in our community.
- We serve over 2500 youth.
We partnered up with a lot of foster homes, AMI,
Our Kids, Citrus, our foster home kids,
and we get a lot of kids in juvenile detention centers,
we also provide services there.
What we actually are trying to get them to understand
is that, it's okay to be a child.
It's okay to be a kid.
I think in this society,
we're choking our youth to make them adults,
quicker than they need to be adults.
Most of that, that's how mental illness comes about,
and these kids just don't have the
services to actually help them get through these
troubled times.
Most of them come from broken homes.
A lot of that starts at home,
but when we get 'em, we allow them to be themselves.
We allow them to paint, to draw.
A lot of them do poetry.
A lot of kids are a whiz at working the circuit board
for studios and stuff like that,
so they're always involved in art.
We just try to cater to them,
as to keep them preoccupied and keep them with healthy
things to get done.
- Give 'em that vehicle to do that.
We have a testimonial right now from somebody
who's involved with Motivational Edge,
let's take a listen.
- What I think the Motivational Edge is to me,
is more than just a lyrical expression center,
it's a place where I can go to feel safe,
and other kids can go to feel safe,
and to express themselves musically.
It's more than music, but academically,
because since I've joined the Edge,
I've got better in my reading classes,
I hope that I can be the one that gets the
Berkeley College Scholarship, and to go from there,
I hope I become a bigger and better artist.
- One of the things that you heard her say,
was talking about being safe.
So speak to that for a minute.
These students wanna feel that they have a safe place
to go and express themselves?
- Most of the kids, well mostly the young boys,
you have to get them going,
but it's so fun when you get them all in a room,
and they're all allowed to be vulnerable.
I think that's the one thing that they're missing.
They don't have the chance to be vulnerable,
in their classrooms or at home.
We give them the opportunity to be vulnerable.
We give them opportunities to let them be themselves,
and to grow as much as they wanna grow.
As long as you have a child that
wants to do that, it's contagious.
The next guy wants to do it,
the next girl wants to do it,
the next boy wants to come in and perform too.
It gives that camaraderie of having kids who wanna have
a healthier outlet of doing something together that
they actually love doing.
- Tell us about the Ambassadors,
'cause you're Chief Ambassador, right?
- I'd make it.
- [Anchorwoman] You're the Chief.
- I'm more the money guy, the money go getter guy.
Basically, what I do is,
I make sure that anybody that donates money or
donates to the program, they obviously see what
the kids are bringing to the program,
and able to put their name on anything they wanna do.
If we opened up a studio,
we were allowed to, through donations,
to put that business name as a respresentator,
and you get to be and feel the control of
having kids coming in and actually having a nice outlet.
So it's nice to have different collaborations
from different businesses to be able to do that.
- Absolutely.
Well thank you so much for being here,
and congratulations on all the hard work that you're doing,
and you as well Carlos at NAMI,
it's helping a lot of people,
so thanks so much.
For more information on mental health and local services,
visit NAMIofMiami.org,
and if you'd like to become an Edge Ambassador,
or want more information on their programs,
visit TheMotivationalEdge.com.
As always, you can find these links on our Facebook
at yourself FL.