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I have been working as an actor for many years. But never before in my work — at least not until April 2021, when I was filming the seventh episode of Reservation Dogs — have I had an out-of-body experience or cried out involuntarily. This time, my body took over. I was shaking, adrenaline coursing through my body as all my nightmares of losing loved ones were unearthed to haunt me anew.

The reason for my visceral reaction: never in my career as an actor, or in my experience as a viewer of TV and film, have I experienced a work of popular culture that addresses suicide among Indigenous peoples with the care and directness that Reservation Dogs does.

Suicide has affected every Indigenous community on Turtle Island and countless Native families. According to the Centers for Disease Control, Native American people have the highest rates of suicide of any racial/ethnic group in the United States. And in Canada, First Nations people living on and off-reserve, Métis and Inuit, die by suicide at a higher rate than non-Indigenous people — in some cases, upwards of 33 times higher.

But these statistics are not just numbers to us; they represent our real friends and family members, each one with an entire community struggling alongside them, and grieving for them after they’ve departed. We may hear these numbers in mainstream news reporting, but we rarely encounter the lives of our Indigenous kin who died by suicide. We rarely witness the aftermath, the friends they’ve left behind. And that is exactly what is explored in the heartbreaking and heartwarming seventh episode of Reservation Dogs, a show that I have the privilege to be a part of, playing the character Elora Danan.

Read more at Time.com.

Carlos Galindo Elvira, the Director of Engagement and Community Partnerships for Chicanos Por La Causa, wrote about the suicide rate amongst Latinx/Hispanics and the lack of mental health resources for them. Elvira about his own suicidal ideation and his search for help in Sunday’s Arizona Republic. He discussed why Latinos/Hispanics are reluctant to discuss this issue and how to find help.

Elvira attributes the hesitancy to talk about mental health due to a cultural problem saying it’s meant to be private, in particular for Hispanic males.

“Those expectations lead to a reluctance to seek help and to get help,” Elvira says.

Factors leading to the reluctance include legal status that could lead to barriers to expressing any mental health issues with someone they trust.

Elvira had a friend that listened and gave him advice when he was open about his mental health struggles. He got the help he needed and now wants to use the knowledge he gained to help others avoid going through the same things he did.

“I want to be a spark through my guest column for people to seek out that help, especially during a crisis,” Elvira said.

Elvira pointed out that it’s oftentimes the person you least expect while also referencing that it could be anyone that’s struggling. He also spoke about the struggle for Hispanics to get the help they actually need.

Read more at AZPBS.org.

In the same way that iridescent colors shift in the light, “Iridescence” is shimmering with meaning.

The student-made short film, which is currently in postproduction, follows the life of an 18-year-old budding artist named Christian (Patrick Zhang) as he experiences his first panic attack amid the stress of college applications. Zhang, a fourth-year communication student, said that throughout the course of the film, Christian has to confront his inadvertently narrow-minded view of the world and his family in order to properly articulate his love for his family members.

“(The film is) essentially about this kid who is applying to colleges, but at the same time, he experiences a lot of tension coming from within his family,” Zhang said. “He’s trying to figure out who he is as a person and as an artist.”

When audiences watch “Iridescence,” director, writer, and fourth-year psychology student Jeremy Hsing said he wants viewers to feel like they are not alone in their mental health experiences. Christian’s turmoil is a natural response to the pivotal, transitional stage of growth that his whole generation is currently experiencing, Hsing said, which is delivered in part by the title of “Iridescence.”

“(The word) ‘iridescence’ is about how something’s color changes just when you view it from another angle,” Hsing said. “This is such an amazing metaphor for life because so many people stay in a box and perceive others as stereotypes, but once you step out of this box and get to know humans outside of these preconceived notions within our culture, that’s when bigotry ends.”

Read more DailyBruin.com.

We all know life has taken a toll on Americans in the last 20 months. But there is a group experts say is really going through it — young, Black boys. The latest studies show there’s been an uptick in suicides in that demographic, and now, advocates are hoping we can ban together and put an end to the suffering in silence.

“There’s something going on in our African-American communities and we are not talking about it,” Angelina Hudson said.

Hudson works day and night to help families impacted by mental illness, and the signs and symptoms associated with them. As interim executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Health Greater Houston (or NAMI), she has seen a lot.

“Our young African-American boys, ages 5-12, the uptick in suicide is really grotesque,” she continued.

According to the latest data, Black children ages 5 to 12 are two times more likely to attempt suicide than their white counterparts. NAMI, the CDC, and other mental health agencies said there are a number of factors contributing to hopelessness nowadays. Bullying, grief over losing a loved one, losing the lifestyle they were used to pre-pandemic, and social media pressures all play a part.

“I got to meet this standard. I got to meet that standard. This person is doing x, y, z, so I have to do that,” Ebony Scott explained about the way his children have felt.

Scotts is very hands-on with his three kids and has noticed when they’ve struggled. His advice to other Black parents? Walk the walk.

“Are we willing to go get the counseling we’re encouraging our children, or we should be encouraging our children to go and get it? So it starts with us as parents, as adults, by leading by example, but then also taking our children to go through the counseling or the therapy they may need to get through what they’re going through,” he said.

Read more at ABC13.com.

When MTV Entertainment Group wants to create original content surrounding marginalized communities, its creation is a hands-off approach.

Instead, it relies on the members of those communities to take the lead and share authentic stories. That was the case for the documentary short “Good Voice Woman,” which is now the lead spot for MTV’s Native American Heritage Month campaign.

The short, directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Kyle Bell, focuses on a young woman named Lakota Beatty who shares how she’s been handling grief in the four and a half years since her sister died by suicide. For Beatty, thinking about her sister’s death sometimes feels like the moment she found out about it, but being an athlete and embracing her roots has helped her wade through the darkness.

“Being Native and knowing that the generations before me have overcome so much,” Beatty says in the film. “Our culture and our ceremonies and our dances … that has been one of the most grounding things for me that has helped me come out on the other side of this.”

Read more at AdWeek.com.

In a normal year, psychologist Nicole Wright sees about 200 patients in her practice at the Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center. Since the pandemic began, her patient load has multiplied to about 1,000.

“It has been crazy,” said Wright, who also directs the community health center’s divisions that provide substance abuse and mental health treatment services. “The pandemic really emphasized a lot of existing issues in the Native Hawaiian community, especially in the Leeward Coast.”

Hawaii has for years struggled with a statewide shortage of mental health professionals, part of a broader shortage of physicians and other medical staff. That gap has been compounded by the pandemic, which has exacerbated mental health problems both nationally and locally. The mental and emotional toll of the pandemic is still unfolding, but health professionals and service professionals who work with the Native Hawaiian community say the recent delta surge’s disproportionate impact on the community has exacerbated existing mental health concerns.

Stacelynn Eli, a Native Hawaiian legislator representing communities in West Oahu that were hit hardest by the latest virus surge, said the pandemic wrought shock, fear, and confusion in her community. Now what’s left is grief.

“It’s just another historical traumatic moment here in our history as Native Hawaiians here in Hawaii,” she said. “We’ve lost so much in just such a short amount of time.”

It wasn’t always that way. For the first year of the pandemic, Hawaii residents who were at least part Native Hawaiian didn’t have disproportionately high rates of Covid-19. The communities facing the worst Covid disparities in Hawaii were other Pacific Islanders and Filipinos. But after vaccinations became available, Native Hawaiians were less likely to get the shot than other communities, according to state data, making them especially vulnerable to the highly contagious virus strain.

Read more at CivilBeat.org.