A Daily Show Ears edition, listen to what's up, it's Roy Wood Jr., I'm recommending one of my favorite episodes of the Daily Shows

Be on the scenes podcast as we bring mental health awareness month to a close. This episode was about the obstacles black people face when seeking mental health treatment.

I was joined by Daily Show Writer's ex Mayo and Daily Show Writer, Astron Womack, for a deeply personal discussion about mental health, the black church and the black lives matter protests of 2020.

If you like the show, be sure to check out new episodes every Tuesday and tell a friend available on iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

What is up everybody, I am Roy Wood Jr., I am a correspondent for the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Welcome to Beyond the Scenes.

This is a podcast where we re-journey deeper into the topics and issues that we've addressed on the show and explore them even more to see where we are today on these same issues.

We're going to do that with some of the show's writers and producers and special guests. You know how on the actual Daily Show we do between the scenes but see now we're going beyond.

I'm going to say it just like that every time. Beyond the scenes. Today we're going to be talking about mental health in the black community.

Now this is a topic that we dealt with on the show back in December of 2019.

There are a few groups who could stand to benefit from therapy more than black people. I mean think about all the things black people have been through, slavery, segregation, winter, all equally traumatic experiences.

But unfortunately, even as therapy has become more mainstream, the black community has had a tough time getting the help that they need.

Now I don't know if you heard 2020 was a crazy year, right? A little bit off. You know you had the pandemic. We had the election. We had the uprisings that occurred after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmed Arbery, Brianna Taylor.

It needless to say, we were a country that needed some therapy, especially black people, but seeing the black community access to mental health care is lacking.

Black and Hispanic children are less likely to get mental health care than white kids and studies show that irritability and the average white teenager is often labeled as depression.

That same behavior is more likely to be seen as disruptive and black or Latino children. And doctors say that can lead to feelings of hopelessness at a very young age.

We have a stigma in the black community when it comes to dealing with mental health.

Black students say where they come from, it's shameful to talk about anxiety, depression and trauma. Making the crisis worse, not enough African American therapists. Today only 4% of psychologists are black.

It's a serious issue. And then having to talk to therapists who don't understand you, that can make matters even worse.

Imagine wasting half your session explaining what wilding out means. You'd have to stop every 10 minutes talking to a white therapist to break down some of the damn abonics.

Or imagine how awkward it gets telling your white therapist that you're in therapy because of white people.

Like, they'd be like the road runner talking to another coyote about why Lee Coyote. I don't have time to break this down.

The segment that we did on the show, that was only 6.5 minutes. And there's a lot more to explore with this issue. And that's why we have to go beyond the scenes.

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