Mapping the Black Mental Health Ecosystem

The Inspiration 

Wellspring: A source of continual supply. An original and bountiful source of something. An abundant pool of information or resources.  

This definition is the starting point from which Steel Smiling is embarking on a multi-year journey to map available resources, document the history of community healing, and build necessary coalitions to make mental health care and support more visible, accessible, and culturally grounded in Allegheny County. It stems from a core belief that community members know what is already working and what might be missing from both community and health system care practices.   

This process, often described as asset mapping, is inherently different from typical needs assessments. While a needs assessment categorizes and emphasizes communities’ resource gaps, an asset map highlights the people, places, and practices already doing the work. It helps us to identify, protect, and strengthen what’s working while collaborating with community members to add resources that make the system better.  Unlike traditional maps that chart physical places, asset maps illuminate the relationships, traditions, and practices that sustain communities and shape how we care for one another. 

“Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost sight of our own role in our care systems, increasingly looking to healthcare institutions to meet needs they cannot meet alone,” said Courtney Abegunde, Managing Director of Steel Smiling. “Through Wellspring, we’re building our collective capacity for care to improve access to mental health support. At its heart, this work is about reawakening and reclaiming what we’ve always known: that each of us has a role to play in creating a culture of care, and that we can be resources for ourselves and for one another.”  

Ultimately, Wellspring will develop a network of healers, advocates, and community members dedicated to strengthening the Black mental health ecosystem in Pittsburgh.  

The Model

Wellspring refers directly back to Steel Smiling’s deep roots in the community. Founder Julius Boatwright launched the organization by simply listening to those in the community. He believed that they knew best what the mental health landscape looked like in their communities – what was working for themselves and their neighbors and what might contribute to better care. Julius had already been doing brief, in-home counseling, but wanted to expand that work to spend more time with residents, explore deeper connections, and meet with folks who had similar backgrounds.  

He started a campaign to walk around neighborhoods asking residents what mental health meant to them, what the general feelings were about mental health in their community, and the types of care that had worked or not worked in addressing mental health concerns previously in their lives.  

Julius turned what he learned from these conversations into advocacy. He launched Steel Smiling in 2015, responding directly to desires from the community members he met. These initial learnings built the foundation for the programs Steel Smiling operates today, such as Beams to Bridges and Steel Healing.  

Wellspring aims to be just as community-informed in its work.  

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Images of Julius Boatwright talking with members of the community.

The Work

Wellspring will work in community, letting the guidance of residents, advocates, and healers direct its outcome, resulting in a fully mapped ecosystem made up of diverse pathways to wellness. Using an iterative feedback process built on appreciative inquiry, Wellspring will involve the voice of the community in every step of the process.  

Program Manager of Wellspring, Jamilah Lahijuddin, leads this work.  

“Building the Wellspring inquiry process means designing a framework where authentic community voices drive every step. It’s about making connections across our communities to archive history, bridge past and present care, and validate all who hold up our ecosystem – whether they are social workers, non-profit leaders, yogis or neighborhood visionaries – ensuring their contributions are documented in a dynamic, living resource atlas” – Jamilah Lahijuddin, Program Manager of Wellspring

Earlier this year, Steel Smiling held two preliminary Wellspring events to get conversations rolling among community members, practitioners, and other healing advocates across Pittsburgh. At each event, a set of 4 core questions were asked to everyone: '

1. What does a positive mental health experience look like? 

2. Who are our local healers and cultural treasures within the Black Mental Health Ecosystem in Allegheny County? 

3. What Places and Spaces are supportive of Healing? Where are we going for care? 

4. What practices have historically sustained us? Identify the cultural wisdom, ancestral teachings, and traditions that serve as our internal power source. 

   
   

Attendees used notecards to record their answers, which were then recorded and aggregated. Some common themes have already begun to emerge, such as nature as a space of healing; commonly identified local healers; focus on belonging; and more.

The team will continue to collect more data from the community, analyze responses as they go, and present ideas back to the community for continuous feedback.  

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Images from the first two Wellspring events.

As one of Steel Smiling’s advisory board member has said, “the culture is the medicine.” This way of viewing mental health care and wellness aligns with Steel Smiling’s legacy of meeting people where they are and building intentional community connections.  

Upcoming Opportunities to Engage in Wellspring

Visit our upcoming art exhibit, Sanctuary | Room Enough, in Garfield, in collaboration with Future Is Black and BOOM! Concepts.

What would it mean to create a home for the parts of ourselves that the world has called irrational, unstable, dangerous, or “mad”? 

This Exhibit showcases art that imagines sanctuary as a kind of psychological and emotional home: a series of spaces or “rooms” that allow us to move through different aspects of Black lived experience. Work that has sat with how joy, madness, frustration, doubt, grief, and anger actually show up and are practiced, and what it takes to hold them at once.

This is not joy as decoration, or madness as diagnosis. This is art made from inside the process, not reported back from the far side of a healed one—the messy middle, grounded in lived experience or honest inquiry.

• Friday, Nov 6: Unblurred – Exhibit Opening, 5–10 PM

• Saturday, November 21st – Focus Group, 10 AM – 1 PM

• Sunday, Nov 22: Exhibit Closing Ceremony + Open Mic 4–8 PM. RSVP at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sanctuary-room-enough-closing-ceremony-open-mic-tickets-2003432037154?aff=oddtdtcreator

• Gallery viewing hours:

  • Tuesday, Nov 10: 1–8 PM

  • Thursday, Nov 12: 1–8 PM

  • Saturday, Nov 14: 1–5 PM

  • Tuesday, Nov 17: 1–8 PM

  • Thursday, Nov 19: 1–8 PM

  • Saturday, Nov 21: 1–5 PM

  • Tuesday, Nov 24: 1–8 PM

Visit the Wellspring page to stay up to date on future ways to engage in Wellspring and Steel Smiling as whole!