Hip-hop has always been an outlet for pain and triumph. So it makes sense it’s also a form of therapy.
The Cope Dealer program in Cleveland, Ohio, is a 14-week mental health awareness workshop using hip-hop therapy to help students deal with daily stressors and trauma. Teens learn coping skills like journaling and breath management and apply them to a song they write together.
“You could come here, make music, listen to instrumentals like you’re having fun… and then at the same time, you have people you can relate to and that build you up,” Sydney Quinn, a Cope Dealer participant at Glenville High School, said.
According to the American Psychiatric Association, only 1 in 3 African Americans who need mental health care receive it. Created in 2016, the program is part of Peel Dem Layers Back and has a mission of bridging the Black mental health gap.
“Meeting them where they’re at… going to their environments where they feel safe and they’re already in, helps them to open up and be vulnerable,” said Jerome Cash, a licensed therapist and Cope Dealer program facilitator.
Hip-hop therapy is gaining traction in other parts of the country, too, including the genre’s birthplace — the Bronx. Students at Mott Haven Community High School turn their feelings into flow with the Hip-Hop Therapy Studio program.
J.C. Hall, a clinical social worker and program director, says many of the students in the program have been in the foster care system, have lost someone to gun violence or have been abused. He says the studio program gives his students a purpose and a reason to keep pushing forward.
“It allows them to get to a point where they can speak about these speechless horrors… be able to really accept what occurred and move forward from it… and rewrite their narratives,” Hall said.
Outside of writing their own music, students also spend time listening and analyzing hip-hop and rap of the past and present. The studio program has helped more than 250 students over the past 12 years.
“This is really just being able to express yourself in a fun way,” said Kryst Jackson, a Hip-Hop Therapy Studio program participant at Mott Haven Community High School. “What I learned about music is more than just lyrics on the beat. It’s what it could bring out of you.”
Learn more about both programs in the video above. Find out more about the Cope Dealer program here and the Hip-Hop Therapy Studio program here.
