Mental Health Awareness for Spanish Speakers
MACG and Social Justice Coordinator Danny Rauda for St Anthony Catholic Church is developing a campaign to focus on creating awareness for the need to assist Spanish speaking communities gain access to mental health services for all, identifying potential barriers to mental health services or providers, create a plan to address shortage of Spanish speaking providers locally, and finding action-based solutions to link providers and patients.
With so much of the resources being dedicated to viewing through the provider lens, we believe this is how MACG and St Anthony Catholic Church in can make its unique contribution to this issue. The research and action teams' goal is to address the root causes of mental health, provide education and information in Spanish, and advocate as well as organize around these barriers to obtain equal access.
This campaign also includes a women's group, the Womens Justice Circle (WJC) in conjunction with Intercommunity Peace & Justice to assist this particularly vulnerable group within the Spanish speaking community ensuring Women have a safe place to meet weekly and address issues that affect them daily with other women using their first identifying language.
IPJ describes the Womens Justice Circle as: The voices of women who are low-income and/or immigrants, women living in crisis and those on the margins are typically not included in organizing for change in a way that meets their needs. The Intercommunity Peace & Justice Center facilitates Justice for Women, which empowers women who are low-income to address the underlying causes of poverty by forming Women’s Justice Circles. To date, we have coordinated over 200 Circles!