Caring Across Communities Collaborative
Funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

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Structured Dialogues

Data collected and analyzed by the project’s Steering Committee demonstrates that school-based mental health services are underutilized by English Language Learners (ELL), most of whom are recent refugees and immigrants.  The lack of understanding of cultural beliefs about mental health among school-based mental health workers is a barrier to increasing access to mental health services among this student population.  At the same time, there is limited understanding about mental health among bilingual parent outreach specialists, bilingual teacher aides (Native Language Facilitators), and interpreters contracted by the district on an as-needed basis.  In response to these factors, the project first sponsored a Structured Dialogue in January 2008 that brought together Western mental health service providers with members of the following cultural groups: Cambodian, Congolese, Kurdish, Mexican, Serbian, Somali, Sudanese, and Vietnamese.

Based upon feedback from the first Structured Dialogue, the project’s Steering Committee decided to continue with the Structured Dialogues -- each one focused on an ethnic community and its healing traditions and each dialogue imbued with the reciprocity of respect for all ways of healing.  The objectives are to learn about a specific group’s beliefs and healing traditions related to mental health, to recognize how these beliefs and traditions connect and/or conflict with Western healing traditions, and to reflect on how our practice in working with multicultural families may be impacted.

To date the project has sponsored Structured Dialogues for the Cambodian, Somali, Sudanese, Afghan, and Mexican communities. Structured Dialogues supplement the Cultural Competency Training Series.