The Chair Already Booked

A man described a stressful week to CBS News, and then the thing he waits for at the end of it. "I know on Friday or Saturday I have a haircut coming, and when the haircut comes I could sit in this chair."

That chair is the whole idea behind The Confess Project of America. The project trains Black barbers to be mental health advocates for men who are "less likely to see a therapist," in the words of a Smiley Movement roundup by Cheyanne Bryan, published 4 November 2026. Movember's campaign this year asks for a "Growmitment," which it defines as taking on mental health, suicide prevention, prostate cancer and testicular cancer.

The word is new. The appointment is not.

What happens in the chair is simple to describe. A man sits still, close to another person, for a stretch of time. Lorenzo Lewis, who founded the project, told Blavity in 2022 that with clippers close to the face, a haircut is probably the only time a lot of men have their guard down. "Barbers share intimate space with Black men," he said.

The project's wager is that an appointment a man already keeps may be an easier door to help than one he would have to start. It also treats a trained barber as someone who can change what gets said in that time, and where it leads.

Lewis gave his first talk in 2016 at a historically African American church in Little Rock, Arkansas, according to the organization's timeline. He had grown up in a shop. "I grew up in my aunt's barbershop, and it was a safe, comforting place," he told Next City and MindSite News in 2022. He credits a barber there named Sylvester with mentoring him. His first attempts were town halls on mental health. "That didn't work at all: Men just didn't come," Lewis said. So the project went where the men already were. Its headquarters later moved from Little Rock to Atlanta.

The training is narrow on purpose. Next City described four pillars: active listening, validation, stigma reduction and communication. Barbers learn to notice small changes, such as withdrawal, lack of affect or changes in grooming. They then point a client toward therapy, a pastor or suicide prevention services. "We train the barbers to be advocates, not experts," Lewis told Blavity. An ambassador program teaches barbers in a region to train other barbers. One ambassador is Craig Charles, who owns Craig's Crown Cuts in Johnson City, Tennessee. "Barbers are a pillar of the community," he told the Johnson City Press, as quoted by Next City.

Why the barbershop and not the clinic? There are several explanations, and they sit side by side.

One is stigma. Next City reported Lewis's view that African American men have traditionally avoided therapy for fear of appearing weak, but are used to opening up to their barber.

Another is cost. Psychology Today, in a 2021 piece by Maytal Eyal, listed insurance restrictions alongside stigma. It noted that with many providers not accepting insurance, therapy can be expensive to access.

A third is who sits across the room. Next City reported that only 4 percent of therapists are African American. Psychology Today put Black psychologists at 5 percent. Next City also reported that Lewis found therapists generally had "zero understanding" of historical and racial trauma.

The last explanation is about the shop itself. Quincy T. Mills, author of Cutting Along the Color Line, said in the radio show Left on Black: "Black men continue to go to Black barbershops because they want to be around Black people."

Whatever keeps men out of the clinic, staying away has a cost, and Movember counts it. Men die nearly five years earlier than women, it says, mostly from preventable reasons, and 60 men are lost to suicide globally every hour. Closer to the chair, Next City reported that suicide is the third leading cause of death for Black males from childhood to age 19.

That is the scale the barbers are set against, so it matters how many of them there are. The counts do not agree. The Smiley Movement roundup says more than 1,300 barbers in over 46 cities have been certified. The organization's own site says 6,000-plus frontline workers, barbers and community leaders have been trained, and 6 million-plus people reached. In 2022, Next City reported over a thousand barbers trained in 40 cities across 15 states, with Lewis aiming for 5,000 barbers and 6 million people by 2024.

Even the highest count measures chairs, not conversations, and the study behind the model is small. Psychology Today reported that Justin Adam Gelzhiser, a Harvard Medical School researcher, interviewed Confess Project barbers. He found they can bridge the gap between underserved communities and mental health care. The work was under review for publication at the time. The project's own account puts the study at 32 interviews in late 2020. Blavity says 35 barbers were reviewed over eight months, with Lewis as a co-author. None of these reports gives a figure for how many men a trained barber has gone on to refer for help.

So what can be pointed to is where the chairs are, and Los Angeles is part of the map. Next City reported a satellite location in the city in 2022. CBS News reported that a shop in Compton, California, which it did not name, takes part. "We believe in a culture of mental health for men and boys of color, and we believe in barbers," Travis Meade, the project's Los Angeles program manager, told CBS.

Somewhere in Compton, the chair is still a chair. On Friday or Saturday, someone sits down.

If you or someone you know is struggling or thinking about suicide, call or text 988 in the United States to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, or find a local line at findahelpline.com.

“We train the barbers to be advocates, not experts.”

1. Movember: Support us (Make a Growmitment)
2. Smiley Movement: 11 men's health projects to support this Movember (Cheyanne Bryan, 4 November 2026)
3. The Confess Project of America
4. Next City / MindSite News: The Confess Project barbers help Black men talk about mental health (Akintunde Ahmad, 2022)
5. Blavity: Barbers serve as mental health advocates for Black men and boys with The Confess Project (Leslie D. Rose, 1 June 2022)
6. Psychology Today: The healing power of barbershops (Maytal Eyal, 3 November 2021)
7. Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta: The Confess Project (21 October 2021)
8. CBS News: Confess Project mental health barbershops