At Stroy’s in downtown Columbia, brotherhood and conversations are helping bring awareness to mental health.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — During Mental Health Awareness Month, experts say conversations around mental health are more important than ever as thousands of South Carolinians continue to struggle in silence.
More than 900,000 adults in South Carolina are living with a mental health condition, according to NAMI South Carolina.
In Columbia, some of those conversations are happening in an unexpected place – the barber shop.
At Stroy’s Barber Shop in downtown Columbia, owner Darrell Goodwin says mental health is still a difficult topic for many.
“People are going through things and no one wants to talk about it. We’re not even used to having open dialogue about it,” Goodwin said.
Barber Khyler Brannon says the pressures many people carry often go unspoken.
“It’s just a weight. It feels like a weight on you. You feel like you have to succeed for the sake of your family. I’ve known about everybody in here about most of my life. They’re easy to talk to if I need to talk to them,” Brannon said. “The main thing people need to do is love each other. I feel like everybody just got away from loving each other. We’re all so divided as a people and that’s the problem. That’s the main problem with a lot of mental health issues.”
Goodwin says stigma and silence sometimes prevent people from speaking up.
“It’s dialogue. We don’t talk about it enough because everybody’s scared of mental health,” Goodwin said. “We see it in people we think are regular. It’s not just the homeless and it’s not just the people with that exact problem. People are going through things and no one wants to talk about it.”
Local mental health experts in Columbia say early recognition and treatment are needed.
“The earlier you can find or treat someone that’s going through a mental health issue, the better off they are,” said Bill Lindsey, state executive director of NAMI South Carolina.
Lindsey also said it’s more common than you think.
“It’s one in five people who will have a serious mental illness. That’s 20% that will be affected by mental illness in their lifetime,” he said.
Those conditions include major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, which can significantly impact a person’s behavior and health if left untreated, Lindsey said.
As conversations continue in places like barber shops, advocates say breaking stigma starts with speaking up.
“All we need is love,” Brannon said.