Thread by @25kWatts

Today I've seen a few threads about mental health in the ADOS community. I have some thoughts. Last year the pandemic took a toll on everyone BUT ADOS were set up to be hit especially hard. We always are. We already endure yrs & yrs of untreated trauma from racism.

The pandemic is the straw that's breaking so many Black Americans. We have been pushed to suffer thru w/o any type of address to the state of our mental health. Our SPECIFIC mental health issues rarely, damn near never get acknowledged in ways that provide sustained improvement.

Over the last yr, my daughter & I went thru the pandemic schedule changes, loss of friends, rearranged custody, divorce, deaths in the family. A LOT. I honestly didn't have the capacity to deal (alone) I didn't know what to do about how life was affecting us. I sought counsel.

I can't fully describe the stress of being stressed while having to stress over finding a good counselor to help with stress. But I went thru it. It's the feeling of knowing we needed help but couldn't get it when we tried.
First, I wanted a Black counselor for Lily...

...but none were available to counsel children her age. Even tho my insurance gave me a list of alleged youth counselors, just one of the dozen+ I called would see her. She was awful. During consult I told her the specific areas to focus on. I only had 3 free sessions...

I wanted them to be like strategy counseling rather than the beginning of long term help. That's what I told her. Ask me why she spent two sessions asking questions and talking about stuff that had nothing to do with what we discussed beforehand. Also did I mention she was white?

It was a trigger because of my experience with ws but she was the ONLY one. I was genuinely worried that the history of racial bias among those in the dominant society would play into how Lily was counseled. But it didn't matter because she really didn't counsel her anyway.

A few other things I noted. I needed face 2 face counsel but some Black counselors didn't provide it. ??? Not even thru zoom.
To get ahold of Lily's awful counselor I always had to play message tag. It would take weeks of leaving voicemails to even schedule an appt.

And this is the experience of someone with insurance, albeit crappy.
In closing
I see many posts from Black counselors who never seem to dive into the nuance of what it is for Black Americans living in a ws country who need mental health help.

And we're just expected to move on. We get no breaks from being bottom caste. People talk about pandemic recovery when there is no recovery for ADOS life in the U.S. yet. So at the very least we need Black counselors to understand this + work to specialize in ADOS counseling.