Every year, a few headlines remind us about Mental Health Awareness Month. And then, just as quickly, we move on.

But the truth doesn’t go away. For people whose lives have been impacted by it, neither does the grief.

I’m a 26-year-old Black man and a project director of a youth-led mental health initiative in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. I’ve been doing this work for years. But I started living this work when I was 12, the year I lost a sibling to suicide.

I didn’t have the language for it then — only the silence that followed.

That silence is still killing us. In California, youth and young adults ages 10 to 24 make up just 21% of the population — yet they account for 57% of all emergency room visits due to self-harm.

That number should stop us cold.

And for young men in that

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