Park City Community Foundation’s Mental Wellness Alliance recently invited Javier Alegre, the Executive Director of Latino Behavioral Health Services, to speak as part of a panel of mental health professionals. Originally from Chile, Javier is passionate about bringing culturally responsive peer-to-peer services to the growing Latino community in Utah. His perspective on the importance of mental wellness is rooted in both lived experience and extensive professional experience and contains a valuable message for folks operating in the mental wellness space in Utah.
We chatted with Javier to hear more about the necessity of this work in Summit County, Utah, and beyond from his perspective as a leader in this space and a beneficiary of community-based recovery services.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
A: As a community or society, I don’t think we pay enough attention to our mental health. We tend to run ourselves down to the ground, and we only seek support or help when we are in crisis. If we took a more preventative approach to mental health as we do with our physical health, our efforts in life would be much more fruitful and appreciated. For example, when we accomplish a goal, we can enjoy the result in the end rather than feel burnt out. In addition, I think that the Latino community is grossly underserved. I feel I have a sense of duty or responsibility to share what I know and how it’s helped me live a fuller life.
A: I think it’s essential, first, to answer what is mental health? Because most of us feel like mental health is what we refer to as persistent mental illness – someone with schizophrenia or psychosis or bipolar disorder. When somebody says, ‘you need to go to therapy,’ that’s where our minds go. We are conditioned to resist and think, “I’m not crazy.” And that is true. The vast majority of the community does not have a severe or persistent mental illness. But that is not to say that we don’t experience mental unwellness regularly.
Every individual goes through challenging situations and circumstances in our lives that bring us to experience depression, anxiety, panic disorders, PTSD, and trauma-induced episodes. And those experiences can manifest in ways that we don’t know how to recognize – daily signals that our minds, brains, and bodies send us when we need support or simply a break. Things as simple as impatience, irritability, or feeling the need to be isolated. Not wanting to be around people or working and feeling like you can’t wait to go home so you can be alone or go to sleep. We, or most of us, experience those things almost daily. Everyday manifestations, such as road rage and the like, show your window of tolerance is reduced, and your mental wellness is not at 100 percent. Suppose you think about a person who is 50 years old, and they have used the excuse that they are “fine” for the entire duration of their life when experiencing anxiety, depression, etc. In that case, that’s 50 years of compounding “I’m fine” when the reality is that we all reach a breaking point. We don’t think of health as taking a day off and taking a break. We see it as a weakness.
A: Everyone. Everyone can always use some support in life at one level or another. Whether it’s consistently or permanently or regularly or occasionally. We all go through things that we need to process and unpack to move on and move forward.
A: The system, historically, is flawed because it’s focused so much on research and evidence-based practices that are outdated, often time eurocentric or white-centric, and they’re not necessarily practical for everyone. I’m not saying the system is wrong or not effective; I’m saying the system is not necessarily the right system for everyone.
One size does not fit all. We all come from different cultural, ethnic, or socioeconomic backgrounds, which bring a whole different set of life experiences that shape us. So our mental health systems need to evolve and expand to include these other cultures, traditions, and methodologies that might be more effective for folks in rural communities, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and more.
A: I think communities of color are reluctant to seek support or help from a systemic institution. And I’m talking about public services or private services. Utah state government or the University of Utah are giant systemic agencies that have a way of managing their day-to-day in a more structured way, which is necessary for an agency of that size. However, they have fine-tuned their care systems to the point that they are very prescribed. There’s not a lot of room for innovation or expansion or openmindedness to other ways to serve individuals. We are so automated, so to speak, that the healthcare system almost acts like a conveyor belt. Someone comes in, you move them through the process, and get them out. So there isn’t much room for services that focus more on cultural responsiveness for BIPOC communities or services outside the evidence-based practice handbook or the research handbook, which would include community wellness.
A: It’s a nonprofit agency, but beyond that, it is a community-based, community-run organization. A CBO (community-based organization) implies that we are working in the community with the community. So the majority of our programming comes from the community’s needs as the community tells us what they need and how they need it, and what’s required for them to access it; rather than our organization telling the community, ‘this is what we have, take it or leave it.’
Most of us, if not all of us, at LBHS, are people in recovery. We have a recovery community organization that serves our clients from the lived experience perspective. So our approach to wellness is more of an empowering, individual approach rather than a more technical, medical assessment and evaluation approach. In the mental health space as it stands, in most cases, if you seek help, you get assessed, you get tested, and then here’s your bill. Or they give you a medication or prescribe therapy once a week.
I’m not saying that that is not valid. I value clinical services, therapeutic services, and medication because they have saved my life. I would not be here without it. But at the same time, I believe there is room for a community-based approach. There is room for folks in recovery to create a space where we can relate to one another, create community, and sustain our recovery together.
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Thanks to the generosity of Karen Marriott and the Marriott Daughter’s Foundation, a $50,000 matching gift to the Mental Wellness Alliance is currently in effect. Any donation made to the Alliance until the $50,000 match is met will be made on a 1:1 basis. We believe in this work and encourage all interested folks to join us in our mission by donating a gift that is significant to them at the Mental Wellness Alliance’s donation page.
Learn more about the Mental Wellness Alliance >>
Learn more about Latino Behavioral Health Services >>
More about Javier Alegre: Javier holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Utah’s Nonprofit Academy for Excellence and recently served as Development Director at Utah Supports Advocates for Recovery Awareness (USARA). He serves on the Executive Committee of the Utah Behavioral Health Planning Advisory Committee (UBHPAC) and co-Chairs the Race and Ethnic Equity & Integration Committee of UBHPAC. Javier also serves as an Advisory Council Member for the National Hispanic & Latino Addiction Technology Transfer Center Network and a Board member of the National Latino Behavioral Health Association.
Posted in: Our Impact, Mental Wellness