The YWCA Northern New Jersey has launched the Center for Racial Healing, New Jersey’s first program dedicated to addressing racial trauma.
The program’s objectives are to train mental health providers in recognizing and treating racial trauma, provide free clinical referrals, and offer communities practical healing tools. It will also aid in developing racial trauma curricula for New Jersey social work schools and collaborate with licensed mental health professionals.
The initiative comes as advocates point to the urgent need for action, as a recent poll by Rutgers University found that eight in 10 respondents cited racism as a serious problem nationwide.
At a launch event for the program at Montclair State University, two panel discussions highlighted the importance of the program. The first focused on racial trauma and its impact, featuring insights from Dr. DeShaunta Johnson, a clinical psychologist and conflict resolution specialist; Brandon McKoy, president of The Fund for New Jersey; and Amber Reed, co-executive director of AAPI New Jersey.
Helen Archontou, CEO of YWCA Northern New Jersey, introduced the launch of this program, which will be housed at the YWCA to make it a community-based initiative. She said the center aims to be a resource for improving community quality of life and influencing government programs, including education.
Reed emphasized the need for culturally competent mental health providers for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders due to the lack of such services. She noted that AAPI individuals often present conditions that are connected to their history of chronic racial trauma.
“For the non-APPIs who are serving AAPI clients, they might not be aware of our community’s history. They might not know how to deal with someone who comes presenting with depression or anxiety, but whose condition is connected to their sort of history of chronic racial trauma with Asian elders, often they don’t have the language even to say I’m depressed or I’m anxious, they’ll it will often manifest as a somatic complaint for them. So they’ll say, like my stomach hurts or my head’s been hurting me, when actually it’s deeply connected to their experience of being marginalized and discriminated against.” Reed said.
During the panel, McKoy emphasized the need for an increase in funding and support to aid the growth of resources for those affected by racial trauma.
“If we truly do have to hold the honest goals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all, we need to proactively address the discrimination that exists because we are withholding those principles from folks who are terrorized and castigated for who they are, for their ethnicity,” McKoy said. The second panel discussed the “Crisis in Care,” where the panelists addressed the shortage of mental health clinicians trained in racial trauma and what the solutions could be to close equity gaps in care.
Dr.Jesselly De La Cruz, the executive director of the Latino Action Network Foundation, as well as a licensed clinical social worker in New Jersey, pointed out the importance of addressing structural racism and its impacts on the individual’s everyday life.
This includes harmful rhetoric and discrimination against Latino immigrants, ranging from attacks on birthright citizenship and scrutiny over immigration status to barriers in language access laws and other systemic inequities, she said.
Dr. Monique Swift Muhammad, a psychologist and president-elect at the Association of Black Psychologists, Inc., discussed the importance of an open mind and a new perspective at this panel. She stressed that the healing must occur within communities and involve those who have caused harm, describing it as a restorative approach.
Many Latino communities face deeply ingrained cultural messages that discourage seeking mental health support and create stigma around emotional vulnerability, she said.
“ So that’s why community solutions like this are really important,” she said.
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