Access to mental health care in Latino and Hispanic communities is limited. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, only 35.1 percent of Hispanic and Latinx adults with a mental illness receive treatment. Language barriers and lack of insurance are some of the main factors that steer Spanish-speaking individuals away from receiving care, but Sanarai, a local healthtech platform, is addressing these issues.
Sanarai is a nonclinical mental health platform that partners with psychologists in Latin America to provide mental health services to Spanish-speaking adults. The platform allows users to receive care in their native language and patients aren’t required to have health insurance to participate.
Sanarai founder Luis Suarez grew up in Mexico City and moved to the U.S. to complete his MBA at Duke University. After graduating and working in consulting for a few years, the pandemic hit, and he began looking for mental health services in Spanish but struggled to find any.
“I was struggling to find someone that I could speak Spanish with and could fit [in] my schedule,” Suarez told Built In. “So that’s when I realized that there’s a big gap to cover the Latino community’s needs in terms of mental health.”
The U.S. has a shortage of mental health care providers that can provide culturally relevant care to Latinx patients. Only 5.5 percent of U.S. psychologists in 2016, the most recent data available, said they could provide care in Spanish. According to a 2021 report from the American Psychological Association, less than 8 percent of the U.S. psychology workforce identifies as Hispanic. Access to care has slightly increased over the years, but not enough to meet demand, according to Suarez.
Read more at BuiltinChicago.org.
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