GOOD TALK WITH KELECHI UBOZOH

Kelechi Ubozoh is a Nigerian-American writer, mental health advocate, and consultant. She has a large body of work in suicide prevention and is featured in THE S WORD. For nearly a decade, Kelechi has worked in the California mental health system in the areas of research and advocacy, community engagement, stigma reduction, and peer support. Her story of recovery has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, CBS This Morning with Gayle King, and Mental Illness Happy Hour with Paul Gilmartin. Her first book with L.D. Green, We’ve Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health, was released in 2019 from North Atlantic Books and Penguin Random House.

Kelechi explains her suicide attempt at age 23 this way: “I wore a mask every day, pretending to be happy when I was not.” She has since shed the mask and realizes that asking for help is not a weakness and has transformed her struggles into action.