Shining A Light on Mental Health Emergencies and Suicides Among Black Youth

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOWMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Jackson for his leadership on this very important issue.

Mr. Speaker, prior to coming to Congress, I worked in education for 20 years. I started my career as an elementary school teacher in the South Bronx before becoming a high school dean of students and guidance counselor and before having the privilege of opening my own school and running it as a middle school principal for 10\1/2\ years.

The year before I decided to run for Congress, 34 children died within the K-12 school system in the Bronx, and 17 died via suicide. No one was making the connection between these horrible outcomes for our children and families with the historical neglect and trauma of their communities and the policies that come not just from local government or State government but also from the Federal Government.

As mentioned by Chairman Horsford, it is incredibly difficult to access mental health resources in historically marginalized communities because of historical underfunding and historical neglect.

It is tremendously urgent and incumbent upon us here in the House of Representatives to pass transformational, revolutionary legislation as it relates to supporting the mental health of every single person in our country. We need to make sure that we are not simply passing legislation but that we are also providing the resources and funding to build out the mental health ecosystem so that we can have more professionals working within the mental health system as professionals supporting the American people, particularly those who are most vulnerable.

A couple of weeks ago, we introduced the Improving Access to Mental Health Act, which seeks to invest many more resources into our minority-serving institutions, Hispanic-serving institutions, and historically Black colleges so that we can build out the mental health programs in these particular institutions.

We need more counselors. We need more psychologists. We need more psychiatrists. We need trauma specialists. We need many more mental health professionals in our schools and communities.

When we make these investments, what we see is a dramatic decrease in the number of people who are incarcerated in our communities because many of the people who are incarcerated suffer from mental health challenges that have gone untreated.

Many of the people who are incarcerated have experienced intense trauma, what professionals call toxic stress and chronic trauma, in their lives that needed to be responded to by a mental health professional, but it never was. As a result, they then commit harm in their communities. When they are going through harm within their own bodies and minds and spirits without receiving the care that they need, they are more likely to commit harm.

Investing in our mental health as part, I might add, of a universal healthcare system dramatically decreases the costs for our jail and prison system, decreases the costs for our overall healthcare system, and improves education and economic outcomes. It is a win-win-win-win when we pass legislation as it relates to mental health and invest in supporting our children and families with their mental health.

I will close with this. I mentioned toxic stress and chronic trauma. We have certain communities in our country--rural and urban, historically underserved, historically underfunded, historically marginalized, and historically neglected--because of lack of access and opportunity, many of those communities have been redlined on purpose by this very institution.

When children are born into those communities, they are much more likely to experience toxic stress and chronic trauma.

Mr. Speaker, when our babies from prenatal to age 3 experience toxic stress and chronic trauma, do you know that the prefrontal cortex of the brain doesn't develop accordingly? As a result, their regulatory skills, as well as their higher thinking skills, are compromised, which leaves them more likely to experience an adverse mental health event or to be diagnosed with a mental health condition. It also makes them more likely to be placed in special education in our school system and makes it more likely for them to be a part of the school-to-prison pipeline.

That is why it is not just about investing in mental health. It is about investing in universal childcare and universal pre-K because when we invest in universal childcare and universal pre-K, we are ensuring our kids are growing up and are nurtured in the most nurturing conditions imaginable, and they are less likely to experience the stress and trauma that I talked about.

When they don't experience the stress and trauma, their prefrontal cortex develops properly, which leads to better education and economic outcomes and keeps them off the school-to-prison pipeline.

Investing in our mental health is a matter of national security. If we really care about foreign countries and how they are maybe responding to us and spying on us and kicking our butts when it comes to technology, when we invest in all Americans, especially the most vulnerable ones, we are going to have incredible economic, social, and health outcomes on the back end.

I thank Representative Jackson for his leadership and for allowing me to say a few words.

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