MENTAL MEDICAL MIRACLE

Picture this; you come from a background where doctors weren't role models in your personal development—growing up in a household where you learn of your family history and how your great grandfather was a sharecropper. Could you imagine yourself setting a dream to become a doctor?

Alternatively, when seeing someone about health, there is less likely a chance that treatment will come from someone who doesn't reflect you, especially for Black Males. You no longer see what is or who represents to be a mental medical miracle. How often are when booking to see a specialist or a doctor that they are a person of color or someone who reflects you? Furthermore, why is it that when we do, we wait extended weeks and months for our care to be able to book with the said physician of color?

It's the impact; it's knowing that not only will this doctor of color impact the health of an individual but a community that lacks representation in care.

We can get a feeling in our bodies (past the fear) of seeing someone who may diagnose us or understand what our body is doing. To add on that "extra" feel-good feeling when that medical professional is someone of the same gender but also the same color is part of being that mental medical miracle.

Being a mental miracle in the medical field to a patient and community by giving them someone who reflects them provides more than physical needs to the patient and community—it offers mental freedom to bring forth comfort and trust. Studies and research show that Black men are often underrepresented in the medical field, making it hard for young to older Black males to find a doctor to provide them care and comfort.

Jamil Joyner, MD, will provide what a mental medical miracle is.