A medical student in Fort Worth who wanted to do something good to support Black men is seeing his efforts pay off.
Antonio Igbokidi, a fourth-year medical student at Burnett School of Medicine at TCU, started the Barbershop Talk Therapy Project back in 2021. Three years later, the program still exists and is still getting attention.
Igbokidi had a big Barbershop Talk Therapy event in New Orleans last month alongside the 60th Student National Medical Association Conference. SNMA is the oldest Black medical student organization in America, and Igbokidi served as president of the 4,000-member organization this past year. He partnered with 100 Black Men in America to pack Dennis Barbershop in New Orleans with residents and Black medical students from all over America for a discussion on mental health.
Funding from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the National Institute on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NIAD) allows Igbokidi to take his mental health sessions for Black men to barbershops nationwide. He’s done sessions in Dallas, Hartford, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C., so far. The $14,000 in grant funding mainly covers the cost of the barber's services so the patrons can get free haircuts during the mental health discussions.
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Igbokidi leads the sessions with a licensed psychiatrist alongside him.
He picked barbershops as a safe space for mental health conversations because as a kid that's where he saw his Nigerian-born father open up. His dad passed late last year, and Igbokidi continues the work in his honor.
The session in New Orleans in March was one of his last barbershop events before he graduates from the Burnett School of Medicine at TCU and leaves Fort Worth for Los Angeles to begin his residency in psychiatry at UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience.
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“Psychiatry is important because oftentimes we’re dealing with things that we can’t see on the outside, and the stigmas that come with it,” Igbokidi said in a social media post. “A psychiatrist figures out a way to heal your soul.”
