Through My Eyes: Journeys of Recovery From Mental Illness and Addiction In Communities of Color

Background:  Mainstream messages and lecture-style communication used in many health education materials are not always culturally relevant. Funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the National Alliance of Multiethnic Behavioral Health Associations (NAMBHA) and Westat developed a process to use narrated photo stories to reach four underserved populations: African-Americans, Asian-Americans, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Latinos. With the goal of reducing of mental health and addiction treatment disparities, these stories allow mental health consumers of color to talk about their journey of recovery from mental illness and addiction. Through their eyes, behavioral health professionals, consumers, and family members will understand that language and culture, combined with proper treatment and support, is a necessary part of a person’s journey to recovery. This poster focuses on strategies to engaging communities of color in content development and the methods used for marketing mental health messages to various ethnic populations.

Program background:  Storytelling provides health information and recommendations to audiences which have traditionally been hard to reach by conventional messaging. Stories are effective in communities of color as a means of addressing different health disparities. Westat and NAMBHA developed Telling our Stories: Behavioral Health and Recovery in Communities of Color, a collection of narrated photo stories to help consumers of color relate to others who may be experiencing similar difficulties. It raises the consciousness of how culture, language, historical trauma, social economic status, and other issues impact behavioral health systems in communities of color and the importance of providing culturally and linguistically competent interventions.

Evaluation Methods and Results: NAMBHA convened a stakeholder group meeting to determine the direction and focus of the project. Key community leaders and organizations were engaged in the development of messages and collection of stories. The project was piloted with African-American and Asian-American consumers. Four African Americans and four Asian Americans from a range of geographic areas were interviewed and photographed.  The people in the stories had diagnoses that included major depression, schizophrenia, schizoaffective and anxiety disorders.  The stories were tested with community members to determine their effectiveness in conveying messages that reduce the discrimination and shame associated with having mental illnesses. Successful development and testing of the stories in these communities resulted in the development of additional stories from the Latino and American Indian/Alaska Native communities. 

Conclusions: The strategies presented show the importance of working within the community to develop messages and capture images. The end result of using personal stories is an effective way to raise the consciousness of how culture and language impact behavioral health systems in communities of color.  

Implications for research and/or practice: The Telling Our Stories project provides information that is important when providing culturally and linguistically competent interventions. This project is an example of how to use storytelling to view mental illness and recovery from diverse perspectives. It presents an innovative method for relaying messages and strategies that could be useful for beginning dialogues around other health topic within ethnic communities.