By Megan Sayles
AFRO Staff Writer
msayles@afro.com
T-Kea Blackman knows firsthand the impacts of suicide. Her 13-year-old cousin died by suicide, and when Blackman was in middle school, she began to struggle with suicidal ideation herself. These thoughts came to a head when she was 24 and attempted to take her own life.
Blackman survived the attempt at a time when she says she noticed a rapid increase of Black people dying by suicide. So, she decided to transform her pain into action.
“I wanted to make sure that Black people had a space to talk about their challenges, and for people who lost a loved one or were or survivor, I wanted to make sure they also had places to talk about that,” said Blackman. “If we don’t talk about it, we can’t start healing, and in the Black community, we can’t heal in isolation— we need community.”
Blackman started to raise awareness about suicide in the Black community in 2018 through a podcast, Fireflies Unite. In 2023, she rebranded the name to Black People Die By Suicide Too (BPDBST).
That same year, she decided to grow the podcast into a nonprofit organization based in Odenton, Md.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that though U.S. suicide rates remained largely the same overall during 2018 to 2023, they increased by nearly 25 percent among Black Americans.
From Blackman’s perspective, often suicide is missing from conversations about mental health, which are already rare in Black communities. She thinks this is due to a few reasons. The religious belief that suicide is a sin, and avoidance of morbid topics in general can lead to a lack of awareness in general.
“There’s stigma and fear of judgment, and I believe that has a lot to do with being able to open up,” said Blackman “In our community, the messaging is, ‘Suicide is a White people thing, Black people don’t do that.’ That’s where the name of the organization comes from. It’s a message to our community that suicide is happening in our community, and we have to talk about it.”
BPDBST’s flagship program is a peer support group for African Americans who are experiencing suicidal thoughts. Blackman said people join the meetings from all over the country.
The organization also helps to train peer recovery specialists in Maryland—equipping them with tools and strategies to support people who are struggling— and leads “QPR” workshops. The acronym stands for question, persuade and refer. It teaches people how to ask if someone is considering suicide, how to persuade them to seek support and how to refer them to the right help and resources.
Destiny English, a former volunteer with the organization and now an administrative assistant, said BPDBST’s work is critical to healing in the Black community. English herself has struggled with suicidal thoughts and attempted to take her own life when she was 14.
Like Blackman, she wanted to leverage her experience to support and educate others.
“Awareness is always the first step to solving a problem. Without awareness a problem is never identified,” said English. “We shine a light on a problem within the Black community that many may not have known about or may turn a blind eye to. The start of the conversation can invite healing within the space.”
Earlier in September, BPDBST hosted a retreat for Black people who are living with suicidal thoughts and who lost a loved one to suicide. Many of the attendees had never been afforded a space to talk openly about their losses.
“There’s stigma, shame and embarrassment that’s associated with suicide. People need spaces to talk about it, and for many of them, it was the first time that they’ve ever been to anything like that,” said Blackman. “Some of the losses were still fresh, and they said it was the first time that they really talked about it since it happened.”
Down the line, Blackman’s goal is to expand BPDBST’s reach globally, recognizing that suicide is a critical issue across the African diaspora, and to design programming for college campuses. But, for right now, she is looking to recruit board members, donors and volunteers for the young organization.
Her own suicide attempt and survival continues to fuel the work she does.
“It influences everything I do in the organization,” said Blackman. “It’s truly the center that helps to remind me why I started it.”
