The month of May was Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States; a national observance we have honored since 1949 to reduce stigma, educate the public, and encourage support for those facing mental health challenges. Even though the month has ended, I wanted to reflect on the ‘2026 theme, #MoreGoodDays Together, which called on all of us to build a compassionate society grounded in community connection and mutual care. Buildings across the country were lit up in green, the color of mental health awareness, as a symbol of solidarity.
It was a beautiful message. But for Black men and men of color in America, it lands with a weight that green ribbons alone cannot capture.
The truth is this: for many Black men, the greatest threat to their mental health isn’t just internal. It’s institutional. It’s the slow, relentless grind of workplace discrimination. The daily performance of professionalism over pain. The emotional labor of smiling through a system designed to keep you stuck, and the invisible damage that does to a man’s mind, his home, and his family.
This is the conversation we must have.
The Mask We Wear
In my memoir, “Brilliant Minds, Ignorant Minds,” I write about what I call the “quadruple life” — the exhausting, invisible labor of managing financial stress, family pressure, workplace injustice, and the daily demand to appear content at the office. Show frustration and you become the “Angry Black Man.” Stay silent and the rage turns inward, follows you home, and slowly poisons everything you love. This isn’t just my story. Research confirms what countless Black men have lived: the stress that comes from suppressing legitimate anger at work doesn’t clock out at five. It travels home in the passenger seat. It changes how we speak to our partners, how we show up for our children, and ultimately, how we see ourselves in the mirror.
I know this firsthand. Many years ago before my divorce, my wife sat me down and told me the truth, that the anger and frustration I was carrying from work had turned me into someone shebarely recognized. Although this realization couldn’t save my marriage, it saved me, because that conversation changed my life. Recent tragedies involving Justin Fairfax, Kaleb Deer, and others shine a painful light on the overall importance of mental health and what I address throughout my book: what happens when workplace racism, chronic discrimination, and years of weathering finally crush a Black man’s spirit? When the pressure has nowhere left to go?
Justin Fairfax was a former Virginia Lieutenant Governor and rising political figure whose career collapsed under a public scandal he never emotionally recovered from. Kaleb Deer was the son of late Chicago-area Commissioner Dennis Deer, a young man from a respected civic family. Both men were involved in tragic domestic murder-suicides in April 2026 — sobering reminders that untreated mental health struggles, isolation, and unresolved pain can have irreversible consequences for Black men and the families who love them.
Some of us start directing that pain at the people we love most, our wives, our girlfriends, our significant others, our children, our parents. We bring the workplace home because we have no other outlet. And I want to be absolutely clear: that is never acceptable. Violence is never the answer. But we cannot prevent what we refuse to understand.
Here is the truth. When Black men and men of color are being systematically devalued, denied opportunities they have earned, watching their families struggle while their potential goes unrecognized, it does something to the mind. It attacks your sense of worth. Your identity as a provider. Your sense of manhood. That wound doesn’t announce itself. It festers quietly behind the mask we wear every single day. The mask protects us at work. But it is killing us at home. And the first step toward breaking that cycle is having the courage to remove that mask.
The Strategy That Saved Me: Living Life in Balance
During one of the lowest points in my career, I made a decision that changed everything. I hired a personal development coach. What he taught me was not how to endure the system, it was how to refuse to let the system be the whole of my life.
He introduced me to a framework of balance across six areas in life: Financial and Career; Physical and Health; Family and Home; Mental and Educational; Spiritual and Ethical; and Social and Cultural. Each area became a source of identity and meaning that no discriminatory employer could reach. My gym membership became an outlet for the anger I couldn’t express at work. My faith became a foundation no injustice could crack. My pursuit of a master’s degree became proof of my worth that no biased hiring manager could deny. Investing in my social life and family relationships became a way to reclaim the parts of myself that workplace racism was trying to consume.
Living a balanced life didn’t make the discrimination disappear. But it gave corporate America less power over my total existence. It kept me from breaking when the system was designed to do exactly that.
A Message for This Moment
To Black men and others, let me speak plainly. The system was built to test our limits. To chip away at our confidence, exhaust our patience, and convince us, slowly and quietly that we are not enough. That strategy works only if we face it alone and unarmed.
Our mental health is not a luxury. It is our most essential resource, the foundation on which everything else stands. Without it, no career title, no paycheck, no milestone means anything. And protecting it is not a sign of weakness. It is one of the most courageous decisions a Black man can make in a world that profits from his silence.
Here is what I know: balance saved my life. Faith steadied me when the ground shifted. Physical fitness gave my anger somewhere to go. Education reminded me that my mind could not be owned by anyone who refused to promote me. Community is key. My brothers in the struggle, who understood what I was carrying, gave me permission to put the mask down, even if only for an hour. None of those things required corporate America’s approval. None of them could be taken away by a biased manager or a rigged hiring process. They were mine. And they kept me whole. If you are struggling under the weight of discrimination, financial pressure, or the silent war you fight every single day, hear this: there is no shame in asking for help. Find a therapist. Lean on your community. Invest in your whole self, your mind, body, and spirit. And if you are in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, today.
Mental Health Awareness Month has passed. The green lights have dimmed. The ribbons have been folded away. The campaigns have wound down, and social media feeds have moved on to the next awareness cycle. But for the men who needed those thirty-one days most — the men of color who put on the mask every morning, swallowed the anger every afternoon, and lay awake at night wondering how much longer they could hold on, the month ending was never the point. Survival does not observe a calendar.
That is what this moment of reflection demands we remember.
The principles explored throughout this article — the balanced life framework, the honest reckoning with workplace discrimination, and the raw story of one Black man’s fight to protect his sanity, his dignity, and his future — did not expire when May did. They live inside Brilliant Minds, Ignorant Minds: One Man’s Journey Through Racism and Self-Discovery. They were written down precisely because awareness months come and go, but the weight those men carry does not.
This past month surfaced something real. Conversations happened that would not have happened otherwise. Some men spoke up for the first time. Some families listened for the first time. That matters and it should not be the last time. But awareness, by itself, was never enough. It never is. The green lights and the ribbons are an invitation, not an arrival. The real work, the kind that saves lives and preserves families – begins with a single, personal decision that no campaign can make for you: to refuse to let the system have the last word over your mind.
If Mental Health Awareness Month planted that seed for even one man, then it did what it was supposed to do. Now comes the harder season. The quiet one. The one without the ribbons. That is where the decision gets tested and where the life worth building actually begins.
Don’t let them break you. Survive. Thrive. And build a life they cannot destroy.
Vernon O’Garra is the author of “Brilliant Minds, Ignorant Minds” One Man’s Journey Through Racism and Self-Discovery (published March 2026). He is also an entrepreneur, podcast host, and advocate for Black men’s mental wellness. Available at Amazon Books and wherever books are sold.
