![]() ![]() Lewis gives regular talks to churches and students ranging from kindergartners to 12th graders, and The Confess Project works with city governments, universities, and other organizations on mental health issues. It has grown from a team of two crisscrossing the country in a van to a staff of 15, and recently relocated its physical headquarters to Atlanta, with satellite locations in Little Rock and Los Angeles. Since its founding in 2016 in Little Rock, The Confess Project has trained over a thousand barbers in 40 cities across 15 states, reaching more than one million people. “Barbershop Confessions” in New Orleans (Credit: NAMI)Īfter enlisting barbers in Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, he and his colleagues added videos and online classes to their outreach. The Confess Project teaches barbers how to see beyond the mask – recognizing signs of depression and steering men and youth to help. The white mask, Lewis explains, “symbolizes the stigma of mental illness, the way men hold in their feelings, the mask of toughness that can create a sort of toxic masculinity that leads to toxic stress.” In the role play, the young man has to take off his mask before he can share his feelings of despair and allow someone to help him. As Lewis probed further, it turns out the young man is feeling suicidal. “Good, good,” the young man replies dully. In one taped interaction, Lewis asks the masked youth how he is doing. Sometimes Lewis illustrated his point in a role play with a colleague, a Black youth in a white mask. Barbers listened and joined in while they cut hair, and clients often jumped in, too. In an initiative called “Beyond the Shop,” Lewis visited barbershops across the South and Midwest to spread his campaign. That way they can counsel them and direct them to other resources as needed, such as therapy, a pastor or suicide prevention services. They’re taught to look for subtle changes in personality, such as withdrawal, lack of affect or changes in grooming that might signal clients are depressed, anxious or isolated. Interested barbers receive training around four pillars: active listening, validation, stigma reduction, and communication. The goal of The Confess Project is not to train barbers to be therapists, he explains, but rather to become mental health advocates, spreading awareness and destigmatizing mental illness.Įver been told to “man up” when all you wanted to do is cry? Wished there was someone to talk to who understood where you were coming from? Had a moment when all the -isms in life were too much to bear? With some seed funding, Lewis embarked on the journey to begin training barbers to become mental health gatekeepers. “The Black barbershop is where we go to be seen, heard and celebrated,” he says. “We want to give ordinary people a voice, letting them know their stories hold power and sharing them can make a difference.” “We wanted to build a loving community around them in which men could talk about their pain without being told to ‘man up,” he says. Traditionally, African American men have been loath to seek therapy for fear of appearing weak, but they are used to opening up to their barber, Lewis says. In 2016 he founded The Confess Project, a nonprofit based in Little Rock that trains barbers to be frontline counselors for clients who are depressed, traumatized or even considering suicide. “So we decided to try talking at barbershops,” a “safe, non-judgmental space” where men could let down their guard and talk about anything. “That didn’t work at all: Men just didn’t come,” Lewis said. Lewis had already tried in vain to hold town hall meetings to bring Black men and youth together to talk about mental health. The ideal setting for that therapy, he decided, was the barbershop. Lewis came up with a novel idea: Since African American boys and men had little access to therapy, why not bring therapy to them? Many were African American males who suffered from trauma, depression and other mental ills linked to their rough childhoods, but almost none of them had received any treatment before their encounter with the law. The barbershop would surface again in his late 20s, when Lewis worked as a case worker with troubled teens at an Arkansas juvenile detention center. It was the cornerstone of the Black male community, a combination of beloved social club, lounge and salon. “I grew up in my aunt’s barbershop, and it was a safe, comforting place,” he recalls. Photo courtesy of The Confess ProjectĪs a child, Lorenzo Lewis spent endless hours in a barbershop owned by his aunt, reveling in the banter, laughter and murmured conversations between barbers and their customers. Lorenzo Lewis (center) and his team at The Confess Project, pre-pandemic.
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