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Insomnia has been established as a risk factor for depression and mental illness for decades, but a growing body of evidence has recently exposed insomnia to be an independent risk factor for suicide that encompasses all age ranges. This discovery has invigorated investigation to elucidate the relationship between insomnia and suicide, and over 20 studies reinforcing this association in adults have been published since 2010 alone. This article analyzes relevant research and emphasizes studies published within the last three years with the intent of proposing theoretical mechanisms explaining the link between suicide and insomnia. These mechanisms may then be used as targets for future investigation of treatment.

Academic medical literature and news outlets extensively document how older individuals in communities of color, especially African American communities, are dying disproportionately of COVID-19 due to ongoing societal, racial, and healthcare disparities. Fear of death and suffering are acutely elevated in Black communities; yet, African Americans have been facing, coping with, and overcoming American societal racism and subsequent detriments to our mental health for centuries. Predominately African American churches (hereafter referred to as the "Black Church") have always served a historical, cultural, contextual, and scientifically validated role in the mental health well-being of African American communities coping with American racism. Nonetheless, buildings of worship closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March 2020. This article is a first-hand perspective of five Black internists/psychiatrists who are deeply involved in both academic medicine and leadership positions within the Black Church. It will explore how the physical closure of Black Churches during this period of increased mental stress, as caused by healthcare inequities revealed by the COVID-19 epidemic, is likely to be uniquely taxing to the mental health of African Americans, particularly older African Americans, who must cope with American racism without physical access to the Black Church for the first time in history. Keywords COVID-19. Church. Religion. African American. Black. Racism I, Reverend Dr. Maria Black, write today as an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, an older African American woman, and a board-certified internist with nearly 40 years of experience in general and academic medicine in Georgia. I write alongside my daughter, Dr.

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