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The American Psychiatric Association reports that of the 41,000 psychiatrists in this country, African Americans make up only 2% of that population. In addition, only 4% of psychologists are African American. With such low numbers, African Americans seeking mental health therapy are having trouble getting matched up with providers who look like them.

Cherish Harris is a grad student clinician in the psychology department at Eastern Kentucky University. She says the number of Black patients seeking mental health far outweighs the number of Black mental health providers. EKU’s psychology department has 58 students. Three of them are African American, two women and one man.

When Harris graduates, she wants to go back home to Louisville and help the underserved population.

“Being able to have somebody that looks like you, I think that’s immediately a reassurance that I’m with somebody that looks like me, knows what it’s like, and also have the care and concern in that regard,” Harris said.

Dr. Theresa Botts is the director of the EKU Psychology Clinic. She says throughout history, the field has had a negative stigma within the African American community.

“We have a somewhat slight increase in the number of folks seeking degrees in clinical and counseling psychology,” Dr. Botts said.

Read more at WKYT.com.

An Arizona company has won a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for a mental health app that aims to reduce suicide by military veterans on the Navajo Nation.

The company, Phoenix-based Televëda Systems Inc., was founded in response to co-founder Shruti Gurudanti’s observation of a massively underserved healthcare problem: isolation.

“I was very close with my grandfather who suffered from age-related chronic conditions that made him homebound,” Gurudanti said, according to the company’s website. “It was a difficult time, and one that made me come to a stark realization: loneliness and social isolation are massive healthcare problems that need to be addressed. Loneliness is a major predictor of functional decline and death, and bringing individuals together can improve a society’s physical, mental, and social health.”

Televëda’s grant-winning project, Project Hózhó—meaning ‘balance’ in Diné—is a mental health app in development that’s designed for and by Navajo veterans. Televëda is creating the app in partnership with Black Hills Center For American Indian Health, an organization aimed at improving the health of Natives living on reservations in South Dakota and Arizona.

The app will use traditional storytelling and talking circles in a hybrid format, with an aim to reduce veteran suicide and improve access to Veterans Affairs resources.

While Native Americans serve in the United States’ armed forces at five times the national average, Native veterans also suffer from disproportionate suicide rates. Over the past two decades, suicide rates among Native American and Alaska Native veterans receiving care in the Veterans Health Administration system increased by nearly 150%, according to a study conducted by researchers for the US Department of Veterans Affairs Rocky Mountain Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center for Suicide Prevention and published in Medical Care in March 2022.

Read more at NativeNewsOnline.net.

With some soil, colorful pots and a variety of succulents, Magaly Garcia will teach mental well-being. Mental well-being is still widely stigmatized in communities of color, especially in the Latino community.

In East Los Angeles, The Wellness Center — a free program at the Los Angeles General Medical Center — is taking a creative approach to prioritize mental well-being among the large Latino population of the eastside by coupling creative workshops with regular mental health services.

“It keeps us busy, we’re working with nature,” said Garcia. “Gardening has shown to help with stress and anxiety and also just a fun activity to have outside in the sunshine.”

Garcia works as a wellness navigator at the center and is tasked with innovating ways to expand on traditional mental health service. She recently led a gardening workshop to teach stress management to women of the eastside.

“A lot of the ladies understand that they are not alone,” she said. “They have a lot of things in common a lot of experiences that they’ve gone through as well.”

Through community-focused, cultural and language-relevant workshops, the wellness center has been able to open the minds of a community who often pushes back on mental health.

“If you’re depressed and don’t feel like doing anything, you get told lazy,” said Garcia. “If you have anxiety, they tell you it’s all in your head.”

Read more at SpectrumNews1.com.

An estimated 326,000 to 580,000 individuals experience sheltered homelessness in the United States each night, putting them at risk for depression, anxiety, serious mental illness, substance use, and physical health problems. Nonetheless, little is known about their treatment needs, particularly of community-dwelling unhoused individuals living outside the country’s major urban centers.

In a study just published in Community Mental Health Journal, Andrew Subica, an associate professor of social medicine, population, and public health in the School of Medicine, and colleagues are the first to detail the scope of substance use, mental health, and health outcomes of unhoused individuals in Hawai‘i County.

In 162 community surveys (e.g., at encampments, beaches, parks), the researchers found extreme levels of illicit drug use with 86% of Hawai’i County’s unhoused reporting lifetime meth use and 60% and 33% reporting illicit prescription pill use and heroin use, respectively. Specifically, they found 12% screened positive for opioid addiction — six times greater than the 2% U.S. population rate — and 74% had methamphetamine addiction. More than half of participants suffered from mental illness with 57% and 56% of participants screening positive for clinical depression and anxiety disorder, respectively, and 86% reported fair/poor health.

In addition to severe problems with drug use, mental illness, and poor health, the team found severe racial disparities in Hawai‘i’s unhoused with 77% reporting Native Hawaiian heritage despite Native Hawaiian constituting just 13% of the Big Island’s population, indicating Indigenous Native Hawaiians may make up most of the unhoused persons in Hawai‘i County.

Read more at InsideUCR.edu.

The South Asian community does not normalize mental health problems, nor does it normalize access to mental healthcare. More so, such care is a luxury, and there are many logistical barriers to access. Even if one were to finally reach out to a therapist, there is still an immense stigma surrounding mental health which deters people. On top of that, it is hard to find someone who the patient clicks with. Therefore, the alternative to seeing a doctor for tangibly treatable ailments appears to be much easier and is more accepted, as a result.

This says a lot about the South Asian American immigrant community. Many South Asian American immigrants came to the UK or the US as professionals. As a result, even within our South Asian communities, we hold ourselves accountable to the model minority myth. Doing a profession within healthcare that is anything other than being a medical doctor invites scrutiny and judgement.

Most concerning has been the lack of such public provisions in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even if people had insurance, it was very difficult to make an appointment with a therapist (let alone with a therapist from a similar background), regardless of whether they had the means or not. As a result, there was also an increase in children and adolescents visiting ERs after attempting suicide.

All is not doom and gloom, however. First, it is important to take this important conversation forward and ensure it continues. To get the momentum going, a social justice policy framework should be created to guide the conversation. Second, there must be active contact with legislators and directors of mental health programs to help with advocacy.

Read more at AsAmNews.com.

Paul Ongtooguk grew up witnessing countless instances where his friends were shipped off to boarding schools.

“You would just be loaded onto a plane and taken to a school,” Ongtooguk said. “A village would get emptied out during the fall of any students who were high school age eligible.”

According to a report by the University of Alaska, by 1969, at least 2,076 Alaska Native children had been enrolled in a secondary boarding school. Ongtooguk became emancipated and was able to avoid going to a boarding school, yet, the eerie memories are still there.

“I was surprised by the schools in how little they regarded the history and culture of the overwhelming majority of students who were attending the schools,” Ongtooguk said.

He recalls that every year, the numerous students committed suicide. The trauma the boarding schools caused have created a lasting impact.

On Dec. 15 2020, the Department of Justice announced they had reasonable cause to believe Alaska was violating Title II of the Americans With Disability Act “by failing to provide services to children with behavioral health disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs.”

The investigation also drew parallels between the boarding schools and the removal of youth from their hometown for mental health treatment.

“The experience of PRTF placement can be devastating for children—and uniquely so for Alaska native children, compounding the trauma of past generations when Alaska Native youth were routinely taken from their communities and sent to boarding schools, including some run by the State or the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs,” the report said.

Read more at AlaskaNewsSource.com.