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Every July, BIPOC Mental Health Awareness Month recognizes the mental health experiences of Black, Indigenous, and people of color. The observance carries the legacy of Bebe Moore Campbell, a Black author, journalist, and advocate who spent her life pushing for mental health care reflecting people’s full identities and communities. In 2008, Congress recognized July in her honor, and the month has since grown into a time to celebrate the strengths and name the challenges that shape mental health across cultures.
That connection between identity and mental health holds true for everyone. For students, it lands in a specific way. College and the years to follow are full of transition, and they can be when mental health challenges first surface. Understanding how your background, identity, and community shape your emotional well-being can help you recognize what you need and feel confident seeking it.
How your story shapes your well-being
The story you carry shapes how you understand yourself and your mental health. Family experiences of resilience, sacrifice, migration, faith, and survival pass down values, strengths, and ways of coping you may rely on without even realizing it.
That same history can also carry weight. For many families, systemic barriers and past injustices have left unspoken stress, loss, or pain across generations. This can shape how your family talks about mental health, expresses emotion, or views asking for help. Seeing the fuller picture can help you make sense of the pressures you feel around achievement, identity, or responsibility, while also recognizing the pride and belonging that come with your roots.
Understanding your story is an invitation: to meet yourself with compassion, to set boundaries that protect your well-being, and to seek support in a way that honors both who you are and where you come from.
Advocating for yourself
Understanding your background is a meaningful first step, and caring for yourself day to day matters equally. A few approaches to help:
- Check in with yourself regularly. Notice changes in your mood, energy, sleep, or stress levels. Catching these shifts early gives you more room to respond before they feel overwhelming.
- Lean on the people around you. Many students feel pressure to be strong, to succeed, or to avoid being a burden, and those pressures can run especially deep when your community has had to be resilient for generations. Reaching out is a sign of strength. A trusted friend, mentor, family member, or counselor can help you feel supported and less alone.
- Seek out support that respects who you are. If it matters to you, look for counselors or services that understand your identity, culture, and lived experience. Feeling truly seen can make a real difference in how care works for you.
When you are ready for support, it is here. Through AllOne Health, you have access to master’s-level counselors who listen first and understand how culture, identity, community, and everyday stress all shape mental health. You decide what to share and what kind of support fits you.
These services are free, confidential, and available to you and your family members, 24/7/365. Whenever you are ready, you can start at allonehealth.com/member-support.
Bebe Moore Campbell believed care should reflect the whole of who we are. Every time you check in with yourself, reach out, or look for support that sees you, you carry her vision forward.
