At Spalding University’s Collective Care Center in downtown Louisville, free therapy is offered by people of color, for people of color.
The providers are graduate students in psychology, and director Lucille Gardner said they serve about 50 people a year, from grade-schoolers to retirees.
They see clients at the Fourth Street office and in other places, too.
“Making sure that we're not siloed in this place,” Gardner said. “They do services here, but they also, what I call ‘break the fourth wall’ – going out into the community and providing services where people are.”
For example, the center offers free therapy to Black families at the group Play Cousins Collective's headquarters in Lyles Mall on West Broadway.
Other local groups are embracing the same strategy. Therapists are meeting clients at doctor’s offices and community centers, as well as on video chat.
It’s one way to lower the barriers to therapy experienced by many people of color. Common hurdles include price, lack of transportation and cultural stigma.
Louisville Metro Government takes a similar approach with its Trauma Resilient Communities project, which offers mental health support to young people and families disproportionately affected by trauma and violence.
The project has been supported by federal funds, including a $5 million grant that ended last year. During that initiative, the city reports over 400 people received trauma-focused therapy. The project also connected more than 100 therapists to training on a locally developed therapy model for treating racial trauma in children and adults.
Nannette Dix helps lead the Trauma Resilient Communities project. She said they provide free mental health services in places that already assist youth in other ways.
“Because sometimes we can have wonderful things that we're offering. But the barrier is so high to jump over, people don't get to jump over it,” Dix said. “So what we're trying to do is lower that barrier and meet them where they are. And whatever they need, we’re going to give it to them.”
For example, the project teamed up with The Spot, which helps young adults build career skills. Counselor Renesha Martin sees clients there every week. She co-owns Martin and Muir Counseling, an agency with a mostly Black staff.
“We will come to your home, we will meet you at McDonald’s, Starbucks, at the park,” Martin said. “Wherever you’re comfortable, that’s going to allow you to be your authentic self and speak.”
Louisville Metro also offers free mental health services at Neighborhood Place sites in west and south Louisville.
A young person can drop by a Neighborhood Place and talk to a community counselor about whatever they’re going through, Dix said. The counselor can connect them to a licensed therapist later, if they’re interested.
Dix said this approach helps people move past negative cultural messages about seeking mental health support.
“And we know that especially for Black and brown folks, it’s hard to talk. … We need to talk, but we’ve just always been taught that, you know, ‘that’s for crazy people,’” she said. “It's not about being crazy. It's about really lifting off some of that cloak of heaviness that you have on you.”
Destigmatizing and increasing access to therapy
Louisville teenager Mariana Salazar tried therapy. She stopped, in part, because of the stigma about it in the Latinx community.
She said she’d hear things like: “You don’t need therapy. Therapy’s a waste of money. … You’ll be OK. Tough it out.”
Still, Salazar thinks she’ll go again someday.
“I feel like therapy is a good thing for people. I feel like some people need to realize that it is a good thing,” she said.
Several more young people of color in Louisville spoke to LPM News about mental health. Most of them haven’t gone to therapy. Some said they’re open to it, and some said they aren’t. The few who have tried therapy said they found it helpful.
When they get stressed out by school, racism, or other experiences, they manage their feelings in different ways. One student journals. Others get their mind off everything by taking a walk, dancing or goofing around and making fun memories with friends.
High-schooler Viet Pham, who’s also a member of the Kentucky Student Voice Team, said he wants to see more places outside of school where young people can form supportive relationships.
“Building community is so important to people's mental health,” he said.
Pham and other students said many of their peers assume professional mental health services are out-of-reach.
“Equity plays a big role in all of this,” Pham said. “I think that therapy – it’s really seen as a rich people thing.”
In Louisville, local groups are joining forces to make free mental health support more accessible.
Louisville Metro’s Trauma Resilient Communities project is collaborating with community partners under a new, $4 million federal grant. One target is to provide trauma-informed, culturally specific mental health services to over 900 people – primarily youth and their families.
During an event at the Waterfront Botanical Gardens in June, city staff and community groups gathered to discuss how they’ll collaborate on the grant initiative.
Karina Barillas also guided everyone through a healing dance exercise. She leads La Casita Center, a nonprofit that serves Louisville’s Latinx community.
Barillas taught everyone a few moves and told them not to compare themselves to each other. Each person’s movement is beautiful because it’s their own, she explained.
“Your way is the best way,” she said. “So when you are dancing, when you are moving, when you are healing, you do it at your own pace. At your own rhythm.”
Sometimes, Barillas said, people talk only about the pain of marginalized communities. But there’s happiness, too.
“I know that there is dancing and joy,” she said. “So embrace the joy of your ancestors, of your cultures, because we are more than our trauma.”
Barillas told LPM mental health support is a thread that runs through all La Casita’s efforts. And now, Louisville Metro is investing a portion of its federal grant money in their work, such as their support groups for youth.
One long-running program is Semillita Latina, which uses dance to teach children self-love and self-confidence.
“What has made La Casita really successful is that we incorporate the cultural piece,” Barillas said. “Because we are growing our programs and our techniques and our strategies based on the community that is teaching us what is meaningful to them.”
Barillas said the new grant initiative will help La Casita evaluate the efficacy of its programs in new ways. But Barillas already sees evidence of their success in the way people return to La Casita as staff, volunteers, donors and more.
“Some of the teachers now were young Latino kids that participated at Semillita when they were little,” she said.
Big needs still exist
The mental health field is a broad industry, and Kentucky therapists told LPM there doesn't appear to be robust data available on the state of therapeutic access in Louisville.
Anecdotally, more people - including youth of color - are able to get therapy than in the recent past.
LPM interviewed more than a dozen people working locally in mental health. Many of them see slow progress in lowering the barriers that people of color of all ages experience when they seek these services. But significant gaps persist.
As the city gathers feedback for the ongoing grant program, they’ve heard from Latinx and Black residents. Many are youth.
They say there are still big needs –more bilingual therapists, and more care that respects and understands their cultures.
Ariel Brooks, a therapist at Mandala House on Baxter Avenue, led a professional training last month on intersectionality in therapeutic work. Intersectionality is about how a person’s interlocking identities, like race and class and disability, affect their treatment by and experience within society.
”Our privilege and our identities cannot be separated from the work we do,” Brooks told the group that attended the training. “Our identities show up in that room. Our patients’ identities show up in that room. And so it's very important for us to honor those things because when we honor those things, that's when we can recognize blind spots that we may have.”
A bad experience can scare someone off therapy.
“I’ve been harmed by a previous clinician that I was seeing due to a lack of cultural competency and humility and awareness, and I don’t want that to happen for someone else,” Brooks told LPM.
This reporting was supported by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network.
