Sinclair Ceasar III moved to San Antonio in the summer of 2020 for a “fresh start” amid the shutdown and seclusion of the Covid-19 pandemic.
But Ceasar had already become familiar with feelings of isolation. In late 2018, while living and working as a self-care writer and influencer in Baltimore, he had a severe — and very public — manic episode that nearly cost him his marriage, his career and his life.
A (now-deleted) tweet he had posted about mental health in April earlier that year went viral. He was praised for his honesty and inspiration, gaining followers and media attention. Ironically, the tweet was a re-telling of his therapist’s advice, but it led him down a path to destruction:
“My therapist taught me to interrupt my anxious thinking with thoughts like: ‘What if things work out?’ and ‘What if all my hard work pays off?’ So, I’m passing that onto you wherever you are, whatever you’re leaving, or whomever you’re becoming.”
Ceasar said he developed a “god complex” stemming from the fame and unresolved childhood trauma. He started burning through money and relationships. On the outside, it probably looked like an early mid-life crisis “or just reckless behavior,” he said.
But from inside his mania, he had “no idea” what was happening to him.
“At the time, the only person [whose symptoms were] manifesting in this way was Kanye West … not a great person to be compared to,” Ceasar said.
In early 2019, he was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder and he thought the stigma of his diagnosis would follow him forever.
But that diagnosis led to the right treatment; the right therapy and medication, his reset in San Antonio and a desire to help others. And this month, he left his job after three years in marketing and academic advising at Trinity University to work full-time at Sinclairity Consulting LLC, a company he established to spread the word about the importance of mental health awareness and general well-being in workplaces big and small.
“There are spaces where we don’t allow ourselves to be human in because we feel like we can’t,” he said. “My argument is: When you are able to be honest and share in those spaces. … Amazing things can happen. You’re going to retain people more, you’re going to reduce absenteeism, you’re going to create environments where people feel brave.”
As part of his portfolio of certifications and personal experiences, he’ll soon be taking Mental Health First Aid courses through the Center for Health Care Services (CHCS) Foundation.
It’s the kind of training and intervention that might have helped Caesar in 2018, he said. He is now part of a growing movement in the U.S. and San Antonio to spread mental health awareness and “first aid” tactics to workplaces, schools and other congregate spaces such as places of worship.
This training teaches people how to recognize, understand and respond to signs of mental illness and substance use disorders — and ultimately connect them with resources, said CHCS’s Mental Health First Aid education and outreach manager Karen Coleman.
When starting conversations about mental health in the workplace, Coleman said it’s important to make “sure that you’re helping someone and not necessarily overstepping the boundaries.”
She compared mental health first aid training to CPR certification. “We want to make sure that you know what to do until that person gets the resources they need.”
Most importantly, she said, the training can help prevent mental health crises before they occur and save lives.
In fiscal year 2022, more than 26,000 instructors, school district employees, higher
education employees, community members and teenagers statewide received mental health first aid training, according to a Texas Health and Human Services report. That surpasses the number of people who received the training annually pre-pandemic.
While research shows people living with mental health disorders are more likely to be the victims of violence than perpetrators, recent high-profile shootings allegedly carried out by people experiencing such issues have further highlighted the need for more awareness and training, Coleman said. And self-inflicted violence is an even bigger concern.
“The safety net for our community is not that big,” Coleman said. “So the idea is we want to make sure that more people know about the training and more people know what signs and symptoms to look for, to get them connected to the resources and making sure that we can prevent crisis situations.”
Community support in crises
In January, the National Council for Mental Wellbeing announced a new training program, Mental Health First Aid at Work, to help employers reduce the negative impact of workplace fatigue and stress among employees across all professions.
“This employee training program comes at a critical time, as research has shown 40% of employees have reported that their jobs have had a negative impact on their mental health, and 75% of employees have indicated stigma was present in their workplaces,” a council press release stated.
CHCS offers more than a dozen different variations or modules of its mental health first aid courses tailored to different lines of work and backgrounds, including courses in Spanish, for adults and youth, military veterans, teens, tribal communities and indigenous people, public safety personnel and older adults. Their peers could then go on to teach each other how to be a listening ear and connector to mental health resources.
The center has seen an increase in the number of people who want to participate in the trainings, which cost roughly $100, but can be offset by grant funding for some applicants.
Since the pandemic, people are more open to having conversations about mental health, Coleman said. “We’ve seen a lot of school districts … reaching out to us, general community members and also just different organizations within our community.”
A 2022 teen mental health survey conducted by the City of San Antonio and its Youth Commission found that nearly half of the local teenagers who participated reported feeling “helpless, hopeless, numb or like nothing matters.”
Training teachers and counselors isn’t enough, Coleman said, because “research has shown that teens will turn to each other before they turn to a trusted adult.”
Other school staff members like cafeteria workers, custodians and district police could benefit from this training, too, she added, and CHCS is working with several local agencies to ensure this “safety net” gets bigger.
Bridges to Care, a program developed by the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), has trained more than 800 interfaith clergy and congregants across San Antonio to be “Wellness Champions” to spread the word about mental health and reduce its stigma.
“We want the local community to develop a shared vocabulary and a shared understanding of what mental health is,” said Nuria Diallo Padro, Bridges to Care’s program director. “It’s okay to pray for your members, but also know when to refer out to other services. [It builds] a community that is responsive to mental health.”
Bridges to Care has expanded beyond congregations to take a whole-neighborhood approach with cohorts from local schools, area nonprofits or other businesses.
NAMI also has a variety of education programs to help people better understand the needs of a family member or peer who has recently been diagnosed with a mental health issue, Diallo Padro said.
“It’s one thing to talk to somebody who’s licensed in [therapy] but then it’s another paradigm to talk about somebody who’s in your day-to-day life,” she said. “How do you relate to them and how do you support them through this?”
Telling a better story
Caesar relates to others through storytelling, in part because of his own experience and a story he once read.
In 2020, he was reading bpHope, a magazine and resource for people living with biopolar disorder, and found an article written by a Black military veteran who had felt a similar guilt and shame that Caesar had felt.
“Reading his story really helped a lot … it made me more hopeful,” he said. “It was what I needed.”
Representation, especially when it comes to the vulnerable space of mental health, matters, he explained.
“If I turn on TV or go online, I don’t see a lot of men talking about mental health,” he said, let alone Black men. “Representation goes beyond a nice-to-have. It can be really life-changing when you hear from somebody who looks like you or is from where you’re from.”
That being said, he feels that people from all demographics can learn from each other and connect through personalized storytelling.
“What is undeniable is that everybody has been impacted by grief,” he said, it’s about finding what story to tell.
“All my identities intersect in some way, shape or form and somewhere in that intersection, that person can have a connection with me.”
