Awareness of Black mental health crisis ‘comes at a great cost’

“Heartbreaking” is how Falon Ensley, a student and former student government president at Lincoln University, described her feelings reading Antoinette Candia-Bailey’s final email to LU president John Moseley.

On Jan. 8, Candia-Bailey, former vice president of student affairs at LU, took her own life. In that final email sent hours before her death, Candia-Bailey describes the toll that life at Lincoln has taken and offers ways that workplace culture could be improved.

Candia-Bailey, who went by the nickname Bonnie, had assumed her role as vice president less than a year prior, in May 2023. In that time she contended she was overworked, subject to microaggressions, faced harassment and bullying after receiving poor performance evaluations, and was dismissed by Moseley and the LU board of curators when requesting Family and Medical Leave and Americans with Disabilities Act accommodations due to her mental health.

Ensley is disappointed at the university’s inability to “take care of an alum, and also a faculty member that they begged to come back and work.”

Unpacking the toll

Candia-Bailey’s story mirrors a phenomenon associated with Black women and girls known as “weathering.” Coined in 2006 by researcher Arline Geronimus, weathering describes how marginalized communities experience “early health deterioration as a consequence of the cumulative impact of repeated experience with social or economic adversity and political marginalization.”

“When you think about weathering, think about something that continues to be beat, and beat, and beat until it’s unable to really maintain its shape or maintain whatever posture position it was in,” said Erica Savage, a wellness lifestyle consultant who has written on weathering. “And this is exactly what is happening to Black women. This phenomenon speaks to social structures that impact us.”

Geronimus’ initial 1986 study analyzed fetal mortality rates among Black and white mothers. She found that Black teenage mothers gave birth to healthier babies than Black mothers in their 20s and older. She suggested that teenage mothers gave birth to healthier children as a result of fewer years of racism-related stress.

The maternal mortality rate for Black women is also disproportionately high compared to their non-Black counterparts. The CDC reported in 2021 that the rate was 2.6 times the rate for white women. Within Missouri, Black women are three times more likely to die within a year of childbirth than white women, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

Other instances of poor mental health outcomes for Black women and girls are also prevalent today.

A December 2023 study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry finds that suicide has disproportionately increased over the past two decades among Black women, and has more than doubled for young Black women and girls aged 15-24.

Following Candia-Bailey’s death, Savage re-shared an essay on her social media detailing her struggles with suicide after suffering a traumatic brain injury in 2021. In it, she suggests that the everyday stressors of Black womanhood keep “Black girls and women relegated to lives of labor, punchlines, punching bags, deterioration, and death.”

Her conclusions are mirrored in the life expectancy for Black Americans. A 2022 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that life expectancy for Black Americans falls behind that of white Americans. Missouri saw the greatest increase in life expectancy disparity from 1990-2019, the years included in the study.

Burnout among Black professionals

Prevalent in the professional sphere is burn-out, a phenomenon caused by workplace stress causing “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy,” as defined by the World Health Organization.

For Black professionals, burnout may be expedited by excessive workload.

Also a former administrator in higher education, Patrice Buckner Jackson says she sees herself in Candia-Bailey’s story. Being in high demand from her supervisors, colleagues and student body led her to burnout, and spontaneously quit her career of 25 years.

“I asked one of my leaders one time and I said, ‘I feel like you’re giving me assignments that don’t fall into my area,’” Jackson said, “‘and that leader said, ‘I’m giving it to you because I trust you,’ and I say, ‘Your trust feels like punishment.’”

Those who overperform are given a greater expectation to continue to show up, Jackson said, but she also experienced identity-related stress. Jackson was often a “safe space” for faculty and students of color to come to with traumas, troubles and concerns. Although it took a toll on her own mental health, she found she could not say no to “people (who) truly need somebody.”

“So you endure,” Jackson said, “You endure the compassion fatigue, and the secondary trauma, and some direct trauma, and the value conflicts because you understand having the seat at the table is so critically important for folks who attend the university.”

Now Jackson coaches professionals, including many who work in higher education, on mitigating burnout.

“I hear the question a lot of “Why do we show up this way? Why do we have trouble resting? Why do we struggle?” and I think it’s the trauma in our bodies, right? When you come from ancestors who were punished for resting, it’s in your body,” Jackson said.

In her final email, Candia-Bailey discusses constantly working and making herself available to staff members:

Why did you allow me to work if I was that much of a bad employee with poor leadership? While everyone was asleep, I was working. While on vacation, I was working. You even asked that I do a “schedule send” on emails so folks aren’t getting messages at all times of the night. I made it clear to staff that I work 24/7, but I don’t have that expectation for them to be up working. The staff can never tell you of a time I didn’t respond when I was working or away from the office. NEVER. Who got calls at 2 am, answered them, and followed up appropriately? If it was so bad, you should have provided me with an improvement action plan to work with me on my poor performance.

Jackson says the pressure for Black professionals to overperform stems from a lack of security in their livelihoods. “And so that lack of safety drives us into weathering,” said Jackson.

Building “powerful community”

Candia-Bailey goes on to explain how her white counterparts are held to a different standard, attributing the acceptance of their aggressive behavior and even illegal actions to their race. Additionally, she asserts she was unable to speak up about this disparity without criticism due to Moseley indirectly saying that Candia-Bailey is an “angry Black woman.”

“No, those words weren’t strictly used, but you indeed alluded to this stereotype that has demoralized Black women for decades,” said Candia-Bailey in her email.

According to Jackson, even at a Historically Black College and University, Black academics and professionals are not guaranteed safety due to HBCUs existing within a higher education system that was not created with Black people in mind. To combat this, Jackson said, it is critical for Black professionals to have a “powerful community.”

“We need the space where we are understood, where we don’t have to explain ourselves, where we don’t have to tell the story over and over, where we don’t have to convince someone of what we are enduring,” Jackson said.

In Columbia, a group of Black professionals has recognized this need, and begun to create a network called the Columbia Black Professional Society. D’Andre Thompson, a member of the society and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Administrator for the city of Columbia, said the impetus for creating the group was the lack of Black empowerment and economic development in professional institutions.

“The whole thought process behind this was how do we create a network that will allow people to know what resources are available,” Thompson said. “That’s what this network is intended to do, is support each other because otherwise no other institutions (are) being built to support us.”

For Black professionals to see a future for themselves within the existing community, it is important to be connected within all aspects of daily life, Thompson said. Even knowing where to get a haircut or a meal from Black-owned businesses could build a sense of community.

“We even have Black, mental health professionals in our community,” Thompson said. “We have folks in this community, who are here to support people of color, make sure that they have access to medical services that they need, counseling services that they need, whatever the case may be, we have folks here, but unless you are connected, or unless you know about any of these things, you just wouldn’t be aware, and to me, that’s unfortunate.”

At Lincoln, Candia-Bailey’s death has led to calls for student involvement in administrative decisions and created a space for students to highlight other ongoing issues at the university, such as the quality of food and conditions of their residence halls, according to previous Missourian reporting.

“We’ve been saying this constantly for years and years,” said Kenlyn Washington, the current student government president at LU. “It’s just said that it took us (until) now until we have the news until we have TV for them to actually understand where we’re coming from and how we’re feeling.”

Other students echoed the sentiment that without the loss of life, they would not have had the space to address their concerns. “It comes at a great cost,” said LU student Tyree Stovall, “but at the same time (Candia-Bailey is) kind of saving Lincoln.”

Students say by writing her email, she left a call to action that they intend to follow.

“She made a statement in her letter that said, ‘It started at Lincoln for me, and it ended at Lincoln for me,’ and it’s not ending in Lincoln,” Ensley said. “Even though she is not here anymore, we are going to make sure that her story lives on forever at Lincoln University, and we are going to make sure that mental health is taken seriously within the years moving forward.”

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