BLOGHumans Need Humans: What the Mental Health Crisis Really Looks Like in Our Communities

We don’t talk about it. We push through. We show up for everybody else and convince ourselves we’re fine. That we can handle it, that we’ve handled worse, that someone else needs the help more than we do.

But more than 61.5 million adults in this country are living with a mental health condition right now. That’s more than 1 in 5 of us. Nearly half received no treatment at all last year, not because they didn’t need it, but because the door wasn’t open for them.

According to the 2024 National Survey on Drug Use and Health released by SAMHSA, of those 61.5 million people, only 52.1% received any mental health treatment. That means roughly 29 million people were living with a diagnosable condition and received nothing; no therapy, no medication, no support of any clinical grounding.¹

The Gap Nobody Talks About

In Black, Latino/a, Asian American, and Indigenous communities, the barriers to care don’t just run deep and they’ve been buried over generations. A system that was not designed with our communities in mind continues to show that in the data.

Among adults who report fair or poor mental health, white adults (50%) are significantly more likely to have received mental health services in the past three years than Black adults (39%) or Hispanic adults (36%). When you look at adults with any mental illness, the gap widens: Hispanic adults (44%), Black adults (39%), and Asian adults (33%) all receive care at lower rates than white adults (58%).²

For Indigenous communities, the crisis is even more acute. American Indian and Alaska Native people are 91% more likely to die by suicide than the general U.S. population. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among AI/AN youth ages 8 to 24. Where access to care in Indigenous communities remains severely limited due to a shortage that reflects decades of structural neglect, not personal failing.³

The provider pipeline reflects the same imbalance. As of 2019, 83% of U.S. psychologists were white, while only 3% were Black, 7% were Hispanic, and 4% were Asian. When you can’t find a therapist who looks like you, understands your culture, or speaks your language, the system is quietly asking you to translate your pain before you can even begin to heal. ⁴

Why We Don’t Ask for Help

Stigma is the most-cited reason people don’t seek mental health care, and according to the latest SAMHSA data, it’s growing more pervasive among young people, not less.¹ However, stigma is only part of the story.

Cost is now the second most-cited reason adults decline care. A therapy session without insurance runs $100–$200 on average, for families already navigating financial pressure, that’s not a barrier, it’s a wall.⁵

Many of us were also raised with cultural archetypes that equate silence with strength. The Strong Black Woman who isn’t allowed to break. The immigrant parent who sacrificed everything and can’t ask for anything in return. The man who learned early that feelings weren’t safe to have. These aren’t just stereotypes, they’re documented psychological patterns.

Researcher Cheryl Woods-Giscombé describes this as the Superwoman Schema: a set of culturally reinforced behaviors that push Black women in particular to project strength, suppress emotions, and resist being vulnerable, even at significant cost to their own health.⁶

For many Black Americans, medical mistrust isn’t paranoia or conspiracies, it’s memory. From Tuskegee to routine misdiagnosis, the healthcare system has a documented history of harm toward Black bodies and minds. Choosing not to walk through a door that has historically not been safe is not weakness. It is wisdom born from experience.⁷

What Connection Actually Does

Here’s what the research shows us: connection heals. Not as a metaphor, but as medicine. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest-running scientific study on human happiness, found that close, meaningful relationships are the single strongest predictor of health and longevity over a lifetime. Not wealth, not achievement, not status. The quality of our relationships.⁸

In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on Social Connection named loneliness a public health crisis and named community as one of the most powerful forces for healing available to us.⁹ What the research identified as the antidote is something our communities have always known how to do. We have always shown up for each other. The question is whether we can give ourselves permission to be shown up for, too. We deserve care.

We deserve community. We deserve doors that were actually built for us.

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If you or someone you know needs support:

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988
• NAMI Helpline — 1-800-950-6264
• Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation — https://borislhensonfoundation.org/resources/