#813 Racial & Generational Trauma - Ashley McGirt-Adair#813 Racial & Generational Trauma - Ashley McGirt-Adair
Mental Illness Happy Hour
Psychotherapist Ashley McGirt-Adair talks with host Paul Gilmartin about racial and generational trauma, addiction, and the long shadow of slavery on mental health. She shares personal stories, clinical experience, and her work making culturally responsive therapy more accessible through the Therapy Fund Foundation.
1:16:23•14 Aug 2026
Racial Trauma, Addiction, and Healing Out Loud with Ashley McGirt-Adair
Episode Overview
- Racial trauma has deep roots in slavery, with patterns like “shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about” tracing back to punishments that outlawed Black emotional expression.
- The crack epidemic and targeted alcohol marketing devastated Black communities, while similar issues today are more often framed as public health crises rather than crimes.
- Stress, racism, and high ACE scores contribute to Black people dying significantly younger, as seen in Ashley’s hospice work with patients as young as their 20s.
- Culturally responsive care is essential; misdiagnosis and overdiagnosis of Black patients have historically been used to control and silence them.
- Financial and cultural barriers keep many from therapy, which led Ashley to create the Therapy Fund Foundation to provide free, vetted mental health support for historically excluded communities.
““We laugh to keep from crying… but there is so much healing that needs to be had within the laughter, within the pain of it all.””
How do individuals from all walks of life battle addiction? This conversation between comedian host Paul Gilmartin and psychotherapist Ashley McGirt-Adair offers a raw look at how racism, addiction, and trauma collide across generations. Ashley shares what it meant to be, as she puts it, “born in the late 80s into a public health crisis…product of the crack epidemic,” contrasting how her family was criminalised while today’s opioid and fentanyl crises are framed as public health issues.
She talks frankly about being labelled a “crack baby,” the shame that followed, and the impact on her mental health. You’ll hear tough truths about how alcohol and highly potent liquor were pushed into Black communities—“liquor stores on every corner as opposed to healthy grocery stores, community clinics, mental health centers”—and how this fed incarceration and early death.
Ashley’s hospice work brings those statistics to life, from affluent white patients living past 100 to a 23-year-old Black woman dying from stress-related illness and high ACE scores. The episode also gets very practical. Ashley breaks down how slavery-era punishments shaped today’s “shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about” parenting and why emotional expression is still seen as weakness.
She explains her focus on culturally responsive care and why she founded the Therapy Fund Foundation to “eliminate barriers to healing for Black communities and others who have been historically excluded from care.” On a more personal note, Ashley shares tender moments, like adult cousins finally playing together on a playground after being separated by foster care and adoption, and the way Aretha Franklin’s “Spanish Harlem” became a bridge between her, her mother, and the memory of her grandmother.
If you’re interested in sobriety, racial justice, or just trying to understand why mental health can feel so hard in certain families and communities, this episode offers plenty to sit with. What unhelpful beliefs about emotions or addiction might you be ready to retire?
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.