Meet the St. Paul mental health professional who wants to inspire other Black professionals to join the field

Meet the St. Paul mental health professional who wants to inspire other Black professionals to join the field

Kasim Abdur Razzaq, a former high school and college basketball star with Rondo roots, wasn’t sure what he wanted to do after he retired from making buckets. The St. Paul Central graduate, now 44, put his bachelor’s degree in psychology to work with youth dealing with behavioral and mental health issues and discovered a calling.

Masters in clinical social work and education and a doctorate in clinical and counseling psychology followed. He then opened a private practice, working with Black and Muslim communities, people he said have traditionally been marginalized. He plans to use a grant from the Bush Foundation to create a pipeline of Black mental health professionals.

Eye On St. Paul recently spoke with Razzaq about his plans for the next two years. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How did you transition from college basketball to mental health?

A: I was invited to do some (basketball) camps and play overseas. But honestly, when I got home, I didn’t really know what I was. Basketball was my thing. My brother said, “You need to get a job.” And I thought, I definitely should. He said he worked at this place and “you’re going to love it.” It was working with kids, like a big brother. So I went over there. He was right. I loved the job. Right away.

The clinical supervisor was like, “Man, you’re really good at this. What do you want to be?” And I was like, I want to be a clinical psychologist. I had a degree in psychology. They were helping young people with some form of mental health diagnosis. And the job that I was doing was called a skills worker. And so I was basically looking at their diagnostic assessment and treatment planning goals. And developing skills related to how to help with some of their mental health symptoms.

Q: It seems like that triggered something.

A: It did.

Q: Now you want to develop a pipeline of other therapists? Why?

A: Black and Muslim communities are marginalized. All of the statistics around mental health, health equity, or health disparities are reflected in barriers to access, barriers to diagnosis, misdiagnosis, overmedication, and lack of services. So part of the job is to offer my clinical training, but also my community training on how to engage with people to show them that social services and mental health can look very different. They can be culturally aligned.

Q: What does that look like?

A: My practice is a different perspective. I am an observer, but also a participant because I work with the community. And there is the acceptance and the recognition that the community and the client have expertise and that I work with them.

If someone is being assessed for mental health issues, they have to be impaired to be considered clinically significant. But if someone is having issues at work and people see institutional racism, that impairment could be a manifestation of racism. That’s never part of what’s considered in an assessment. If work is debilitating, or school is debilitating, and you happen to be black or a person of color, what are the implications around racism? And what does intervention look like? Because intervention looks different if that’s the issue.

My work is about bringing in people who are from the communities that I work with. Right now, a big part of the work that I do is professional development. I work with the school systems and some of their people who are in very clinical roles, but not necessarily the social worker or their counselor. People who are in culturally specialized roles. I’m developing something called a Black mental health professional pipeline.

I did some work at the University of St. Thomas, and some of the data we got was that only 2% of mental health professionals in the state are black.

Q: Is your Bush fellowship intended to get people into the field who otherwise wouldn’t become mental health professionals?

A: Yeah, that’s part of the plan. Being able to take some time out of my full-time job to specifically organize, collaborate, identify, and build out what this pipeline should look like? I have two years to slowly roll this out.

The idea of ​​a Black professional pipeline came out of my work in St. Paul Public Schools with their cultural specialists. These are roles that you can have a degree in, but you don’t necessarily have to have a degree. And so these roles lack professionalization. When I came in, they said, “We’re not being respected.”

And what I ultimately learned was that the people who fill these roles are going to be phenomenal therapists and psychologists. This is an opportunity to not only develop and train them, but also to advance them in a potential career path.

Q: Was this your first attempt at a Bush grant?

A: No, I tried four times.

Q: And the fifth time was the charm?

A: Yes.

Q: Close your eyes. What do you see in two years?

A: First, I develop a solid business model for how I do this work. And second, I develop and bring to the table and improve the workforce that creates both representation and a different way of being and doing the work.