I've been wanting to see the movie Beyond the Lights since it was in theaters, it seemed like a really cool movie. Finally I sat down and watched the movie after I saw that it had hit Netflix a while ago, and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and not necessarily for the movie itself but for the underlying message, depression and suicide. Depression is a major illness that affects so many individuals, sometimes they are aware they are suffering from the illness and sometimes they don't until it's too late. Suicide seems to be growing at a rapid rate, so many people not aware of the fact that they are suffering from depression turn to suicide to stop all the pain they may be feeling in their lives. In the African American community, the take on mental illness is the worst. The show Empire touched on the seriousness of mental illness last season and how in the African American community we feel that mental illness is not something that affects us, that it is a "Caucasian disease." But just like so many other things in life, mental illness has no ethnicity, no color, and it's time to spread awareness of mental illness and how it effects all ethnicity.
