For 24 years, Diana Huerta has been the only member of her family to live in the United States. The rest are still in Mexico and in frequent contact, but talking on the phone does not alleviate the anxiety and depression they feel from being isolated in a predominantly English-speaking region.
Huerta tried to get on the waiting list at El Futuro, Orange County’s only bilingual therapy clinic, but there was always too much demand. Then, her Carrboro store closed in 2015, and she lost hope and turned to her virtual sessions with a Colombian therapist so she could talk to someone who understood her. I turned to
“With the lack of clinics and therapists, we saw a huge need for mental health, especially in the Hispanic community,” Huerta said in Spanish. “Especially when it comes to language.”
And last May, Huerta and hundreds of other Orange County Latino community members banded together to form the Alliance, a private managed care organization (MCO) serving Orange County’s uninsured residents and Medicaid recipients.・Requested mental health support from Health. In response to their call, he raised $500,000 in donations, which went toward services in Elfturo and community programs in Orange County.
That led to the Mentes Fuertes (Strong Minds) program. The program, part of El Futuro’s new community health initiative, includes his 10 free psychoeducational sessions for Orange County residents 18 and older with symptoms of anxiety or depression. I am.
El Futuro employed four community health workers (CHWs) to deliver the sessions. All spoke Spanish and spent months undergoing intensive training that is part of the Mentes Fuertes curriculum, said Estefania Castro, the project’s manager. The curriculum is based on cognitive behavioral therapy and modeled after a similar program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
“This is a program that we know works, it’s evidence-based, and it requires a lot of skills from different treatments and different techniques that we know work, especially in the Latinx community. “,” Castro said.
During each session, CHWs listen to the struggles and experiences of community members and provide strategies and coping mechanisms that members can incorporate into their lives, including mindfulness, behavioral activation, psychoeducation, and self-management.
Mentes Fuertes is El Futuro’s first mental health initiative in Orange County in several years. The store in Carrboro is closed due to lack of funding, and clinics in Durham and Siler City are still open, but it will be a long road before residents receive help.
Last May, a public hearing at St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Chapel Hill amid a mental health crisis stemming from years of denial of Medicaid reimbursement to undocumented immigrants by Alliance Health’s predecessor. This call for support came in the form of an accountability rally.
Groups like Orange County Justice United and the North Carolina Conference of Latino Organizations have banded together to hold rallies and invite faith leaders, public officials, and community members like Huerta to talk about the importance of mental health transparency and community action. He gave a lecture on sex.
Huerta lives in Hillsboro and works as a house cleaner. When she discovered the long waiting list at Futuro, she considered folk treatment options, but she was unable to receive help due to the high cost.
“You try to use all your tools and all your knowledge to convey your feelings and say, ‘I can, I can, I can,'” Huerta says. “But you can’t do that if you need help.”
North Carolina has more than 1 million Hispanic residents, but the Latino mental health crisis is not limited to Orange County. Nationally, only 36% of Hispanic Americans and Latinos received mental health services in 2021, compared to 52% of non-Hispanic whites.
But Orange County is unique in its perseverance and community activism.
There was an air of victory in the air when Alliance Health Chief Operating Officer Sean Shriver announced the $500,000 pledge at the end of last May’s legislative session. Now, nearly a year later, Castro said the community is finally feeling the impact of that funding through the care they receive from CHWs.
“We were very fortunate to be able to find community health workers,” Castro said. “We have hired four people who are perfect for this role, and every time I hear their stories, I realize how passionate they are about our community and this type of work. Masu.”
The four employees are part-time and balance community work with other jobs. They come from a variety of backgrounds, including experienced advocates and organizers, community project advisors, child care professionals, and physicians.
At the beginning of the program, the CHWs were a little overwhelmed by the amount of material they needed to know, but after just one month of delivering sessions, they quickly realized that their four staff members were more than capable. Castro says it became clear to him.
“Earlier this year, around February, one of our community health workers came to us and said someone had contacted him and said, ‘Hey, you’re actually dating one of my friends. We’re working together, and I saw a change in her.’ And I want to do that for myself,” Castro says.
That message came after just four or five sessions with participants. Since then, the number of programs has only grown. As of March, Mentes Fuertes had 48 of his recipients enrolled and completed more than 205 program sessions.
Despite the program’s early success, a new physical space for El Futuro is still up in the air. The donation from Alliance Health was intended to begin a multi-phase return of brick-and-mortar clinics in Orange County, but there are no plans to rebuild the Carrboro location.
In the meantime, CHW has been holding sessions in community spaces thanks to partnerships with agencies such as the Orange County Rape Crisis Center, St. Thomas More, and Holy Family Catholic Church. El Futuro also does community work in these spaces to find Mentes Fuertes participants, Castro said.
“When we do outreach at a host site, that person can meet us at that host site, so they don’t have to go to an unfamiliar place, so that’s really great,” Castro said. “They’re still in the community.”
CHWs and community members share a connection through a common language. In North Carolina, 8 percent of the population ages 5 and older spoke Spanish at home from 2018 to 2022. CHWs not only speak Spanish as their first language, but they also prefer Spanish to English.
For people like Huerta, meeting with Spanish-speaking program staff means they don’t have to pay expensive private therapy or look outside the United States for mental health support.
In addition to breaking down the language divide, one of the program’s biggest successes has been adapting the curriculum. After months of CHWs watching videos, reading manuals, doing special training, and engaging in role plays, Castro was amazed at how well the curriculum worked, even in the short term. said.
“We were looking at the numbers and we knew it worked, but I think they experienced it themselves and I experienced it through them, to be honest. “I’m surprised,” Castro said. “It’s amazing that people have this level of influence.”
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