Amid immigration crackdown, Newark clinic offers mental health care in Spanish

These have been tough times for the mental health of Newark’s Hispanic community, more than 100,000 people with Spanish-language roots who’ve been hit by the immigration crackdown and pause in SNAP benefits.

“The kinds of trauma that people are experiencing, kids experiencing — getting snatched out of their homes, off the street, coming out of hearings,” Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka said, referring to the crackdown in particular. “It causes mental anguish on top of the other mental anguish that you’re going to have trying to figure out how to eat, how you’re going to get a job, all these other kinds of things.”

So Baraka and others welcomed the opening of a bilingual mental health clinic on Thursday in the city’s Black and brown Lincoln Park neighborhood.

The clinic is a joint project of the nonprofit La Casa de Don Pedro and RWJ Barnabas Health, a statewide healthcare network whose 700 locations include Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark.

El Barrio Wellness, as the clinic is known, includes what La Casa calls a “Food Pharmacy” stocked with staples that are both healthy and savored by Spanish-speakers.

“To have this here, with a pharmacy for food in the basement, is exactly what we need to be doing,” Baraka said.

In addition to the basement pantry and administrative offices, the clinic or wellness center includes a half dozen rooms of varying sizes for individual and family therapy or counseling sessions.

One spacious room on the second floor, intended for family sessions, includes bay windows, two sofas, a pair of armchairs, a coffee table, a rug and a nonworking fireplace.

“We may call it ‘the Living Room,’” said Dr. Enmanuel Mercedes, a psychologist who directs the center, stressing that comfortable, welcoming surroundings contribute to effective therapy sessions.

The center also includes a play-therapy room for traumatized children, which contains picture books, a child-size table and chairs, a cushioned hopscotch mat, and an easel with a whiteboard and colored markers. Officials said the center may eventually include a childcare space where children can spend time while their parents or guardians have individual or couples sessions.

Comfort is a key point of the center, particularly on an emotional level, said Mercedes. Beyond its cozy furnishings and large windows that let in the sun, Mercedes said the center is intended as a place without the language or cultural barriers that can sometimes hinder the trust needed for clients or patients to open up about what’s wrong so it can be addressed effectively.

He also stressed that the center will be open to people beyond Newark and will not be limited to Spanish- or English-speaking people. In addition to having hired two full-time and two part-time therapists and a pair of student clinicians, the center’s operators hope to recruit additional staffers who speak French and Creole for Essex County’s West Indian immigrants, Portuguese for Brazilians in Newark’s Ironbound section, or Hindi or Bengali for Indian immigrants, and so forth.

“We are looking at serving the entire state,” Mercedes said, “anyone that is looking for clinicians that speaks their languages and understand their cultural experiences.”

Newark City Councilman Patrick Council, who was on hand for the ribbon-cutting, said the new center would serve as a referral point for constituents who contact his office seeking mental health counseling.

The yellow brick townhouse occupied by the new center may be familiar to Spanish speakers as the former home of El Club de Barrio, a social services agency that merged with La Casa de Don Pedro about 15 years ago.

“This kind of became ‘social services central,’” La Casa Executive Director Peter Rosario said of the surrounding neighborhood, which also includes the Integrity House addiction and mental health services nonprofit geared toward the region’s general population.

The new wellness center will be run by La Casa, the biggest social service provider for Newark’s Hispanic community, with 13 locations citywide. Its board chairman, Arcedio Aponte, attended Thursday’s ribbon-cutting.

For its part, RWJ Barnabas Health covered 80% of the $500,000 cost of redeveloping the building, which used to house La Casa’s HR department and AIDS-related programs, both of which were relocated.

The remaining cost of the center was covered by the State Department of Children and Families through its Hispanic Women’s Resource Center in Newark.

La Casa and Beth Israel both provide mental health services to the area’s Hispanic community, but in complementary ways — not as competitors.

For example, Beth Israel’s MDs and technology offer emergency room services and drug prescriptions that La Casa’s therapists and counselors cannot.

At the same time, La Casa provides housing, employment, food and other forms of assistance that may be linked to mental health but not addressed by the hospital, which is about three miles from the new wellness center. Officials said the relationship and services will only improve with the addition of the new wellness center.

“Peter Rosario sits on our advisory board,” said Balpreet Gewal, an RWJ Barnabas executive who took part in the ribbon cutting. “We know his services and he knows ours, and we communicate that back and forth. Whether it’s our patient coming in here, or vice versa, we know when and what intervention is needed.”

For information on hours, services or booking an appointment, visit the El Barrio Wellness home page.