By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer

Working closely with families to help them heal from gun violence and trauma is DeAngelo Mack’s calling, but passion and purpose are not without a downside.

Seeing young people dealing with pain and suffering left Mack with scars. He’s sharing his experience with depression and anxiety to help other Black men, who may be suffering from mental illness in silence.

“I really do believe it began when I started my work around violence prevention and intervention,” Mack says. “I used to run a hospital-based violence intervention program that worked with young people who were either shot, stabbed or severely assaulted.”

Mack worked through WellSpace Health, with support from Kaiser Permanente. 

“In 2010, there was a really large violence issue in Sacramento,” Mack notes. . “We were, I think, second or third in homicides in California. Those entities knew that violence was high and this idea of hospital-based violence intervention was emerging and Kaiser thought it would be great to set up a program in South Sacramento where Center Parkway and Mack Road was a hotbed for these homicides. They knew about my work as a youth pastor and a community organizer and they literally found me and said, ‘Would you like to start this program?’”

Seeing many of the youth he mentored losing friends and family to gun violence made accepting the offer an easy choice. Mack was unprepared, however, for what he would witness and experience in doing so. “I don’t think anyone’s prepared to see babies with these very violent injuries, being stabbed and being shot.” 

In order to do the work, one has to be able to put their feelings aside to support victims.

“I remember walking into a room and being with a young person whose chest was wide open,” Mack recalls. “He had gotten shot and they had to open his chest and they had to leave it open. He’s alert and he’s talking to me.”

It was one of his first cases.

“I just didn’t know it was going to be like that. I had to walk in the room and respond to him in a way that didn’t trigger him, didn’t cause him to feel like, ‘Oh, what’s wrong? Am I going to die?’ Even though I felt he might, I had to be encouraging and strong for him and his family.”

That went on for nine years.

“Being a part of that world and seeing our young people, specifically our Black and brown young people, specifically our Black and brown boys, was hard,” Mack says.

They say, “Don’t take it home with you,” but that’s often easier said than done.

“The first year was hard,” Mack says. “I think in 2011, I kind of got my bearings, but it was still very difficult.”

Baggage Claim

Particularly tough was knowing that most of the children in his caseload had previous encounters with trauma.

“Once you unpack the fact that they’re shot, then you have their everyday life and what they dealt with before being shot and continue to deal with as they’re healing. All of that was very taxing to me. This was a world that most don’t see. When people are shot, you hear about them on the news, they’re normally dead or they’re forgotten.
“Here, we were actually having relationships with these survivors and really hearing their story and where they came from. You may have heard on the news somebody got shot, but you don’t think about what happens tomorrow with them and their families. That stuff is truly heavy. If you’re a person that has any ounce of caring or empathy, it’s going to take a toll on you and it did take a toll on me.”

To survive, Mack compartmentalized. But that didn’t last long.

“Because the work was coming so fast and so heavy, there was hardly time to go back to those rooms where you stuck those feelings and confront them,” he says.

Mack says many who work in health often fail to address their own mental and physical well-being, believing that those they care for deserve all the focus.

“I’m not the one laying in the hospital bed, right? I’m not the one carrying around a colostomy bag,” Mack says. “I’m not the one paralyzed for the rest of my life, so you kind of put yourself on the back burner. I did that for so many years.”

Things came to a head around 2015. He was in a toxic relationship. He was raising four daughters. There were also a myriad of unresolved issues from his own childhood.

“They would always be there on the back of the stove simmering, saying, ‘Hey, remember me? You’ve got to deal with these things, you’ve got to talk about these things or share these things with someone or they’ll just fester, boil over and spill out,’” he says. “Coming home after being at work with these patients and home being as bad as it was, I didn’t have a sanctuary to go to or to check in at.”

He simply checked out.

“I wasn’t present in the lives of my family members or my friends. I did my best to put on a mask in front of work folks that I was around and the clients I had, but I knew that it wasn’t sustainable and I knew that I needed to really seek help and figure out a way to take care of myself.”

Healers need healing too, but asking for it wasn’t easy.

“I come from the old school of Black folks that said what happened in our house stayed in our house,” Mack says. “You didn’t tell strangers about your problems or your issues. You didn’t share your mindset or mental capacity or mental illness issues with anyone else. You barely shared those with the people in your house. Therapy was for white folks.”

Mack had clients who required more than medication to recover from their trauma. He sought out different practices for them such as meditation and breathwork.

“Then I said to myself, if I’m telling them to take a breath, or count to 10 and close their eyes and these types of things, then why not turn that on myself and see if it works.”

Coping Mechanisms

Mack was a big proponent of patients seeking therapy, but hadn’t necessarily been sold on it himself.

“I would leave work and come home and just literally sit on one side of the couch every day and have very little interaction with the kids and not share with my partner at the time.”

His then-girlfriend suggested he seek professional help. The therapist quickly found him to be severely depressed and suggested medication. Mack balked.

“I had dealt with a bunch of abuse all my life and was able to cope through other mechanisms. Because I was such a shell of myself, I had not been tapping into those mechanisms that I knew could help me through the mental anguish.”

Reconnecting with one of those – nature –  made a world of difference. “Running through the woods and being in open spaces where I could just take in the air, the trees, the grass and the sky was therapy to me.”

He also began to “self-medicate.”

“Self-medication is tapping into the things that bring you joy and happiness and creativity,” he explains. “Those natural things, being outside and tapping into my art crafts, they were medicine.”

He did find marijuana, later.

“I had never ingested any drugs in my life,” Mack says. “I had family members who were bad on drugs and dealt with that most of their lives and are still recovering to this day. That was always a thing in our household: don’t do drugs. That was branded into my psyche. I was 38 or 39 before I consumed cannabis and it was something about the self-medication that was different than the prescribed medication that was coming.”

Cannabis has been a helpful tool in releasing bottled up energy, Mack says.

“I feel at times in society, we are in these pressure cookers and the lid is so tight. There are certain things that release the valve and lets the lid loose at least a little bit for some of that pressure to come out and some of the needed things to advance, to ascend and come in. It’s been a really cool journey just experiencing who I am through this self-medication process and that self-medication, meaning all of it, not just marijuana.”

Today, Mack serves as director of equity justice for Public Health Advocates. He’s a proud dad and has been in a healthier relationship since 2018.

“We are constantly evolving,” he says. “I think we’re a different person every five years. 2015 was a while ago and over time, I’ve just learned so much more about who I am and what I need. I’m a person who absolutely loves humans and is fascinated by the way we think, move and act and want to give and support in every way I can. I realized over time over this evolution since 2015, that’s not sustainable. I can’t continue to pour out of an empty pitcher onto others and expect to be OK. I’ve really turned the love I have for others onto myself.”

Being self-serving is self-care for Mack.

“I am much more transparent with the folks I love and my friends. When I’m feeling some kind of way, they know it. I used to just hold those things back and kind of put on this facade that all things are well. I like to call it ‘hiding the wound.’ I used to hide my wound well. Now I understand that there’s a power to vulnerability.”

It’s healing power, he says.

“I’ve created some amazing relationships and authentic relationships with people who I can trust to be vulnerable around them and take off my armor and be a real human, not a ‘masculine man’ who has to hold it all, but an actual human who feels and hurts and needs as well. I’ve grown to increase my toolkit from just these minor things that could help me get through day to day, to a toolkit that is ongoing for a lifetime.”

“Head Space: Exploring Black Men’s Mental Health” is an OBSERVER’s special series.This project is being reported with the support of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2024 Ethnic Media Collaborative, Healing California. Senior Staff Writer Genoa Barrow and The OBSERVER are among the collaborative’s inaugural participants.