Summary: The State of Mental Health in a Washington, DC school...as told by Soop. You really can’t put him in a box. Soop’s a writer, he’s a rapper and he’s spent most of his adult life caring for those struggling with mental health issues. (He also grew up with our editor.) This episode, we focus Soop’s work as a dedicated aide at a DC middle school, where he also leads an Art Therapy class. He inspired us to reference it during the intro where we added an original song of his, titled Therapy. Although we focus on his current work in DC, this is hardly Soop’s first foray supporting the mental health community. After graduating from Howard with a degree in English and Psychology, he signed on as a case manager for mentally ill patients in New York. There was no typical patient by any stretch of the imagination but the reality was they most likely lived in one of the five boroughs of New York City, had an income beneath the poverty line, and have one, if not multiple of the following mental illnesses: Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Psychosis, any one of the many types of depression or a substance use issue tied to a relating mental health episode. Doming Out felt it necessary to start understanding something we don’t experience, as two white, male, middle-class Christians, on a daily basis - the link between racism, poverty and mental illness. If you can’t get the resources to get on your feet, and stay on your feet, how are you supposed to begin addressing a mental illness?
