Mental Wellbeing is Critical for Sickle Cell Warriors’ Overall Health and to Avoid Avoid Debilitating Pain Crises
Mental health disorders in the United States post-COVID have turned into an epidemic, according to leading health experts, including U.S. Surgeon General under former President Joe Biden, Vivek Murthy, who issued a warning back in 2022 about the growing mental health crisis in America.
Psychological wellbeing is important for everyone, but for those in the sickle cell community, a positive outlook and emotional stability are crucial because sickle cell warriors live with chronic pain every day.
The CEO of the Sickle Cell Foundation of Georgia and the host of “Unveiling Sickle Cell: Beyond the Pain” Tabatha McGee tackles the topic of mental resilience and cognitive health with two experts, licensed professional counselor Dr. Contrina Wilcox and Clayton Andrews, who is also a licensed professional counselor and a warrior, too.
Strategies for maintaining good mental health are so important, McGee said.
“Sickle cell doesn’t have a look …. I can’t look at you and tell … then when you start talking about the mental health aspect, you can’t see that either,” she noted.
“So many people who are broken and really need mental health counseling. They’re very strong. They don’t want anyone to know I’m at my breaking point,” the foundation leader observed.
Another issue for warriors who may need psychological help is the stigma in the African American community surrounding mental health counseling and mental health therapy.
Andrews believes transparency is critical, that it’s important to talk about experiences to make sickle cell patients comfortable enough to discuss something as personal as how they may be feeling or coping with their illness.
“I know there are areas that I have to gain support and being able to encourage others to say, ‘Hey, okay, I need this support too. I need the kind of help that I might not be getting from my physician or from my primary doctor or my hematologist.’ You know there are the needs that are the needs that are a little bit more extreme that I'm going through that. I want to have that help,” he explained.
Wilcox said some warriors may be embarrassed. “It may be shame. It may be no one will understand what I’m going through,” she stated.
But as a mental health clinician, making that person feel very comfortable to know that it's okay to talk about it. Okay. It's okay not to be okay. If you need help, it's okay to seek the help,” she added.
Wilcox said that by providing a safe space, more warriors are encouraged to talk about how they’re coping with the chronic illness.
The good news on the mental health front, Andrews said, is that more and more people are now acknowledging the anxiety that comes along with a chronic illness like sickle cell disease and that care exists.
“For a long time it's always been about the physical aspects and the physical consequences of sickle cell, which are very real. But we've never had a chance to really touch on what are those emotional social cues and those psychological effects that come along with experiencing that,” he said.
But that’s finally changing.
-By Shelby Lin Erdman