NAPS Annual Conference 2024: The Barbershop Project

I attended that annual conference of the National Association of Peer Supporters (NAPS) in Chicago this year. If you’ve not been to this conference before, I’d encourage you to consider it.  One of the great advantages of attending is to hear about clever things that people are doing around the country.  In hearing them talk about their work, I often feel inspired by the people themselves. The ideas behind their innovative work also encourages me to think about what opportunities are right in front of me that I don’t see.

At the 2024 NAPS Convention, I attended just such a presentation. This was a keynote speaker, Lorenzo Lewis, talking about his very clever work developing the Confess Project. 

Lorenzo is a large African-American man who looks like he can have a booming voice, but instead had a soft-spoken personal style that drew the audience in.  He started by talking about his own personal journey, growing up in a family in which his parents were absent due to mental health and legal issues.  He was raised by his aunt and uncle.  Like many of us, those family issues fed into mental health concerns that threatened to derail his life.  He found his way to recovery, in part by looking for ways to address the larger needs to support the mental health of his community. 

 He talked about the large needs for recovery support within the African-American community, where suicide is the third leading cause of death. He saw that mental health providers and social service agencies have limited credibility in that community.  He started looking for ways to change how his community talks and thinks about mental illness, treatment, and recovery.

Recognizing that barbershops are an important place for community connections in the African-American community, he asked permission at a local barbershop to come and talk about mental health.   With great personal courage, he went to the shop at a busy time, stood up and gave a personal talk about depression and recovery to the people sitting in the shop.  I can just imagine the thoughts of the people getting their haircut when they started hearing Lorenzo talking about his own challenges and his concerns about his community.  There was apparently a long pause at the end of his talk, and then someone in the room started talking about their own struggles with depression… and the project took off. 

They now call this the “Beyond the Shop Program”  (https://www.theconfessprojectofamerica.org/ ).  They started training barbers to become mental health advocates around the country. To date, they have trained over 5000 barbers and 1200 female beauty stylists in more than 35 cities. They are now widening their focus to substance use and the opioid crisis by providing culturally-responsive mental health peer support to those affected by addiction.

Lorenzo talked about the reaction of the larger community – the surprisingly positive reaction. Gillette corporation, among others, became financial sponsors of the project.  Researchers at Harvard University offered to partner with him to evaluate the impact of his project.  He talked about his mixed feelings about these partnerships, as many in his community view businesses and scientists, with suspicion.  He did pursue those partnerships with caution, and has found them to be very helpful. 

Lorenzo continues to expand his national efforts, impacting more and more people.  His talk combined a wonderful personal presentation of his own experience in recovery, with an impressive discussion of innovative strategies to move people toward engagement in recovery.  All of this supports his vision of “a world without stigma and shame”.

He and his team are clearly doing wonderfully innovative work.  His talk reminded the audience that there are still big needs in our communities, needs that threaten the very survival of our neighbors and family members.  He also reminds us that there are still clever ideas that we have not tried yet – ideas that will make a real difference.   Where else in our disconnected culture might there be opportunities for recognizing and encouraging recovery.? I saw a recent study that pointed to the fact that mail delivery people, cashiers, waiters/waitresses, and neighbors have contact with some of our most isolated community members.  Is there some opportunity there for recovery conversations? Sports leagues and clubs are still popular in many communities.  Is there an opportunity there?  We need to keep looking.

Peer Support Specialists like Lorenzo see these needs with a different viewpoint than the clinicians and researchers who are trying to address those needs.  He is a great example to every one of the potential for innovation that Peer Support Specialists can create.

DISCLOSURE: I have no financial tie to the National Association of Peer Supporters and no conflict of interest.  I have been a member since 2023.

KEY WORDS: Peer Support Specialist, Innovation, Diversity, NAPS