May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and this is an opportune time to speak up about the mental health issues in the African and African-American communities. For so long, mental health has been a taboo subject, and it is often not taken seriously until its effects are life-threatening or fatal. Snoop Dogg’s 21-year-old daughter Cori Broadus and many others are now vocal about their struggles to encourage others to speak up too.
Broadus took to her Instagram to speak up about how she contemplated suicide and the reason we all need to keep on pushing regardless of our struggles.
“The last few weeks my mental has not been so great,” she confessed in the caption. “At one point I tried to end my life but you & my family really give me a purpose to live & helped me realize life is much more than materialistic things & you gotta just keep pushing through the bullshit. THANK YOU… #mentalhealthawareness.”
A day after sharing the photo with the above caption, the 21-year-old took to Instagram Live to shed some light on her experiences growing up with lupus from age six and dealing with the taunts of being “the only chocolatey one” among her siblings, Cordell, Julian and Corde.
“You’re just in pain and you don’t know what’s going on. And you look at your brothers and other family members and you’re like, ‘Why? Why me?’” said Broadus during her live session.
She went on to explain why she contemplated suicide in the first place. Her boyfriend, Wayne Deuce, got into a car accident and she felt there was no need to live without him, thinking he may not make it. She checked herself into a mental health facility where she reflected on the true importance of life.
“You just have to learn to appreciate stuff because, at the end of the day, stuff doesn’t matter.”
“As I was in there, I started appreciating everything,” she said.
Deuce shared a post in solidarity with his girlfriend’s earlier post on his Instagram as well. He wrote, “I love you Princess. This time is about us getting our minds right for a better and healthier lifestyle. We riding till the end.”
Mental Health America, an organization that started the monthly observation of mental health, says one out of every five American adults will have a diagnosable mental health condition in any given year.
The coronavirus pandemic has aggravated the situation for many individuals. At its peak, there were many suicide cases that were recorded during the lockdown phase, according to authorities. The goal of this awareness month is to help people appreciate and accept the existence of mental illnesses.
