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'The Black Clinicians' create safe therapy space for Utah's black community


The Black Clinicians create safe therapy space for Utah's black community (Photo: KUTV)
The Black Clinicians create safe therapy space for Utah's black community (Photo: KUTV)
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The death of George Floyd and the images of the past two weeks open deep wounds for Utah’s black community.

Melanie Davis, a licensed mental health counselor at Empath Healing & Wellness in Sugarhouse said her clients are understandably shaken.

“It impacts you to your very core of who you are,” she said. “It impacts you when the people you love resemble the people on TV that you are seeing being murdered in cold blood.”

Deep-rooted pain, anxiety and fear are all once again ignited with protests happening around the country after Floyd’s death by a Minneapolis police officer.

“When you see that, you don’t feel free. You don’t feel like you can go about your everyday,” she said. “It sends a really big message to the black community that you may or may not be safe.”

That’s where accessibility to mental health becomes important, and Davis said Utah’s black community is under-served.

“I just see it as really critical that people of color have access to therapists of color,” she said.

To have a therapist or counselor that can relate to lived experiences from the black perspective is crucial.

“Especially as it pertains to specific types racial trauma that occurs when someone has experienced racism,” she said.

In a predominately white state, access to black mental health providers can be hard to come by, which is why Davis started her practice to begin with. Now, she’s teamed up with other providers to create the Black Clinicians.

“We work together, refer to each other to support people — especially people of color — with finding mental health resources that they can feel safe with,” Davis said.

The group of mental health providers includes Davis, Dr. LaShawn C. Williams, Dr. Kimberly Applewhite and others. Together, they are creating a safe space for people of color to address mental health and process what’s happening around them.

“If someone can relate and really know what you’re experience is really does come into play when it comes to emotional work,” Davis said.
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