NEW BEDFORD, MA – Working to eradicate stigmas around mental health in the migrant community and fostering resilience, Tracey Taldon and her team at Wellness For Our Future have been serving the Massachusetts community since 2023. Their annual brunch, well known and loved for being filled with entertainment and delicious food, aimed to raise around $10,000 and a sense of community among migrants by connecting them with mental health practitioners native to their culture.
“To make it here safely and to have a lot of your dreams and your thoughts and your hopes shattered all at once, it’s traumatic,” explains Tracey Taldon, Founder of Wellness For Our Future. “What do we mean when we’re talking about mental health? What do we mean when we’re talking about postpartum depression? What do we mean when we talk about developmental delays for our children?”
These are subjects Gina Benjamin, Executive Director of the Haitian Mental Health Network, says are often overlooked. “There are a lot of stories of our new arrivals where they were robbed in Haiti or had a lot of traumatic incidents that happened to them that compromised their safety and wellbeing.” The impact from these traumatic experiences can often establish a ripple effect that trickles down into every day life. When combined with factors such as facing language and financial barriers with a lack of community in unfamiliar territory, the impact on migrant mental health can be devastating. “In other communities it’s either you’re healthy or you’re crazy,” she explains. “The work of Healing and Wellness is really normalizing it.”
One of the largest barriers mental health workers in the migrant community find is the ability to connect those in greatest need of support with qualified clinicians that can both speak their language and understand their culture – work Healing with Wellness aims to provide daily. “It’s so critical now to ensure that organizations that do provide culturally and linguistically responsive care are able to survive and are able to thrive. Because if they thrive, then our communities thrive.”
To learn more about Healing & Wellness: Empowering Migrant Minds, visit their website.
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Emmalyn Reid 