Barbers Now Being Trained to Spot Clients with Troubled Minds

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Is necessity or curiosity the mother of innovation? Sometimes good old common sense is the driving factor, and there will be no Nobel prize for seeing the obvious. That, however, is what’s behind a new development in barber shops and hair salons.

What’s the buzz? It’s that barbers and hairdressers are be trained to detect mental health problems among the clients sitting in their chairs. It makes perfect sense. People regularly confide in their trusted barber or hairdresser the most personal details of their lives. And these chats are enough to detect signs of troubled mental health. With a small amount of training, hair stylists can help direct their customers to sources of support.

Using barbers and hairdressers as a portal to mental health assistance appears to be a growing trend in several countries including the U.K, U.S., and Canada. As Daniel Reale-Chin recently reported in The Globe and Mail, groups like Black Mental Health Canada (BMHC) are training barbers to become first responders to members of their communities. BMHC deserves credit for applying a little common sense, something as uncommon these days as the dodo bird.

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