By Deborah Walker

Outside of Livingstone College’s counseling center in the W.J. Walls Student Center, a student lingers by the door against the wall, phone in hand, pretending to scroll until the hallway clears. When it does, he quietly slips in to meet with the Director of Counseling, Dr. Rhonda Flowers-Corpening. Moments like this reveal the implicit guilt in the African American community of asking for mental health help – especially among Black men – and how it can create a wall of silence, shame and unrealistic expectations.

“The problem with (conversations about) mental health is the stigma,” Flowers-Corpening says. “Most of the time, people associate mental health with ‘crazy’. I’ve had students say, ‘Dr. Flowers, can you meet me outside, so nobody sees me going into your office?’ Sometimes they’ll sneak in when nobody’s looking. The idea is if you need counseling, something must be wrong with you.”

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, a month that the National Alliance on Mental Illness calls “a time to raise awareness, spread hope and spark meaningful action around one of the most urgent mental health issues of our time”. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention reports that, each year, approximately 24,000 college students attempt suicide and 1,100 do not survive the attempts, making suicide the second-leading cause of death among American college students. The numbers don’t suggest that African American students suffer more or less but, anecdotally, the cultural stigma often blocks their willingness to name their pain and solicit help.

At HBCUs like Livingstone, where men make up 58% of the student population, the hidden struggles are not just statistics, they are realities that college leaders confront every day. While conversations about mental health in the white community are more common and candid, African American men often remain on the margins – standing behind walls built too high for them to scale alone. Erecting and living behind the proverbial wall of mental health struggles can be deadly for them.

“Most Black men are raised…to be hard. You’re raised not to show a lot of sympathy,” says sophomore sports management major Bryce Gay, who also serves as Mr. Sophomore. “It gets to people’s heads. You grow up with it drilled in: ‘I’m a man, I’m supposed to be strong.’”

Gay has watched friends name their depression only to be dismissed at home. “‘You’re a man, be a man now.’” That attitude doesn’t sit well with Gay, “especially with all the deaths we’ve seen—classmates, friends, family. This should be higher on our agenda of support.”

As a student leader who also lives with anxiety, Gay wants to make the first step easier. “I feel it’s our responsibility to make sure classmates feel seen and heard,” he said. “As men, we don’t always have to be strong all the time…Men can cry.”

Gay’s own toolkit is simple: breathing techniques, stepping into a quiet space, headphones on—often Brent Faiyaz—and time alone in his room to decompress. This fall, he plans to host drop-in one-on-one hours and a “Barbershop Talk” conversation for male students which he describes as “a space where somebody can come in and let everything go and talk without being judged.”

College staff often encounter students struggling with myriad mental health challenges even in safe spaces like residence halls. Maurice Roper, Livingstone’s director of residence life, sees the effects of male students’ walled silence.

“Some of what I’ve recognized has really been emotional detachment (from) separation anxiety, being away from family and friends, being in a new environment,” he says. His team of residence hall directors and resident advisors are trained to notice when a student begins to withdraw or isolate. “We ask (residence hall directors) to create four programs a month. Some are fun, some are educational, and some focus on things like loneliness. I tell them: if you see something off about a student, talk to them. We can’t diagnose, but we can listen. And sometimes students will tell you a lot without directly saying it. If it’s deeper, we call Dr. Flowers-Corpening and her team.”

In addition to leading the college’s counseling center, Flowers-Corpening is a member of Livingstone’s award-winning mental health task force, led by First Lady Jacqueline Davis, who holds a doctorate in nursing practice. The task force aims to dismantle the invisible walls blocking students’ mental healthiness brick by brick, and their efforts have gained national attention: in August, the task force received Insight into Academia’s Mental Health and Well-Being Award, making Livingstone the only HBCU in North Carolina to earn the recognition.

And off campus, mental health support is available in the city of Salisbury. Students can access Behavioral Health Urgent Care for 24/7 walk-in crisis support—an alternative to the ER where walls of embarrassment often keep young men away.

The college’s faith leaders also understand how high those walls are. The Rev. Lloyd Nivens, IV knows the pressure many young men bring with them.

“Men are raised so differently,” he says. “Some young Black men are raising themselves, some have had to survive, and then we all converge on a college campus. You’ve got a whole lot of different backgrounds, different ways of being raised, coming together in one place. That in itself can be a mental health trigger. Too often, men are taught to bottle everything up. In the Black community especially, we hear, ‘pray it away.’ And prayer is powerful but sometimes prayer and counseling must go hand in hand. God can work through a therapist too.”

For him, dismantling the idea that strength means silence is essential. “When we teach young men that manhood means never crying, never asking for help, we’re not building strength, we’re building pressure cookers. And sooner or later, that explodes. Real strength is being able to say, ‘I need help,’ and not be ashamed of it.”

For him, the key is relationships. “Rebuke without relationship leads to rebellion,” he says. “Without trust, even the right advice won’t stick. But when men feel safe enough to talk, to cry, to admit, ‘I’m not okay,’ that’s when healing begins.”

From Livingstone’s residence halls to the chapel to the counseling center, and now a 24/7 urgent care in the city of Salisbury, the message is the same: men, you are seen, you are valued, and you do not have to carry this alone.

Even in the digital world, walls are beginning to crumble. Social media has opened unexpected doors. “I’ve had students tell me they first learned about therapy through a TikTok,” Flowers-Corpening noted. “That tells us the conversation is changing…even if slowly.”

Speaking up is not a weakness; it is where healing begins. And at Livingstone, students are learning that walls don’t have to stand forever—they can be broken down, brick by brick, together.