OXON HILL, Md. — A homegrown DMV celebrity wants to have a frank discussion about a tough subject: mental health.
Taraji P. Henson, star of the show ‘Empire’ and DMV native, hosted a mental health symposium at the Gaylord Convention Center in National Harbor. Taking the stage is nothing new for Henson.
“This [cause] is near and dear to my heart because it came out of my own necessity,” Henson told a crowd inside one of the ballrooms.
Instead of reading rehearsed lines, she delivered her own address to the hundreds of people attending her ‘Can We Talk?’ symposium.
“We come here to talk about mental health and how to heal,” she explained. “I grew up here, I saw lot of suffering in the city. But this is also the city that made me who I am”
The symposium was a gathering of workshops, panels, and demonstrations on how to talk, cope, and treat mental health.
“We are losing a lot of people because of unhealthy mental situations and I think its preventable,” Henson said.
Henson teamed up with Prince George’s County Councilman Ed Burroughs for the event. Burroughs brought with him hundreds of Prince George’s County high school students.
“When we look at our data, nearly 20% of high school students have contemplated suicide its an alarming number,” Burroughs said.
After one of the panels for students, we met Oxon Hill freshman Marley Cashwell. He told WUSA9 that his own mental health has become more ‘top of mind.’
“My brain is really hard to shut off, hard to relax,” Cashwell said. “I feel like I’ve always gotta be doing something.”
Through some of the panels and discussions, Cashwell said he walks away with a simple, but important message.
“It’s okay to not be okay sometimes,” he said. “There’s people you can talk to no matter what, no matter what you’re going through, just never give up.”
That’s one of the big lessons Henson wants the students to learn.
“I am trying to hopefully break generational curses,” he said. “Hopefully we are doing that with the work we are doing.”
The hope is students can help end the stigmas associated with mental health.
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