Welcome to Imani State of Mind, a podcast about mental health, culture, politics, and whatever else I think you need to know.

I'm Dr. Imani Walker, and you may know me from married to Medicine, Los Angeles, or my YouTube series

mother and daughter.

I'm a working psychiatrist in the city of Los Angeles, but most importantly, I'm a mother,

a daughter, and a black woman living in America.

I grew up in Harlem, and I remember my block was the kind of block that was its own little

community.

We all made sure everyone on the

block was good. And that's the same approach I have with my patients and listeners. I want to make

sure everyone has a place and space to help with their mental health. So I decided to become a

psychiatrist a long time ago. But one of the reasons why I wanted to become a psychiatrist is just because

I knew that just looking around at my family and looking around to some of my friends, who I also

consider family, that we go through issues. And a lot of us as black folks are really not

open to discussing our issues when we really need to be,

especially because in this day and age, we've lived through, let's just see in the past three years,

coronavirus, we've lived through George Floyd, we live through number 40, 45, we live through a whole

bunch of stuff, and we definitely need to have the space and openness to be able to discuss our specific issues.

So the times that we've been living in are crazy, and many of you do not know where to start when you want to talk about your mental health.

Let's figure it out together here on Imani state of mind.

You'll find out really quickly that I am not your average

psychiatrist and this is not going to be your typical mental health show. We're going to laugh

and we're going to learn how to better protect your own mental state. And because everything in

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