FIU’s SJMC helps fight stigma of mental health services in our community

Making mental health and substance services available to youth is not enough to ensure that the community benefits from them. Fear of the unknown, social stigma, unwelcoming environments and some cultural beliefs often keep those who most need services from actually getting them.

SJMC assistant professor Maria Elena Villar (far left), Lorene Bauduy ’10 and Andrea Jackson ’10 make up the FIU-FACES of Miami social marketing team.

To address this issue, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) at FIU teamed up with Miami’s FACES (Families and Communities Empowered for Success), a project funded by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The goal is to transform the way mental health and substance abuse services are delivered to youth in Miami-Dade County.

While services are available for all youth, there is a special emphasis on reaching youth and families from Haitian and Hispanic backgrounds, as well as LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning) youth, who face specific cultural and social barriers to accessing services, even if services are available in the community.

SJMC assistant professor Maria Elena Villar, Ph.D. along with research associate Lorene P. Bauduy ’10 lead the social marketing team for FACES. Since last year, they have been helping the project team create a brand identity for FACES, talk to the community about their attitudes toward mental health and substance abuse services, and develop culturally competent messages to address barriers surrounding mental health and substance abuse related issues. To ensure community members’ involvement in the transformation of the system of care, the team holds monthly social marketing sub-committee meetings with members of the community.

“By working with community members as equal partners, we have learned how to talk about these issues is ways that do not offend, label, or stigmatize.” Villar said. “We knew that many families did not want to go to something labeled ‘mental health and substance abuse.’ But we didn’t know what they did want. Now we have a much better idea.”

The team’s success is based on the ability to make people feel welcome without labeling them – a strategy that hasn’t gone unnoticed.

In July, the team met in Chicago at the Summer 2011 System of Care Transformation Training, a conference with other social marketers from across the country to share their experiences. There, they participated in the 2011 ECCO Recognition Program award ceremony, where they won Gold in the Partnership Development category and were finalists in the People’s Choice category.

“Maria Elena and her team have helped us ‘translate’ the goals of the system transformation into a message that the community can relate to, and have helped us better understand the concerns of the community,” said Nicole Attong, director of the FACES project.

“Our partnership with FACES of Miami is yet another example of how FIU and the SJMC promote community engagement and how this process allows people to feel ownership of a project, which is crucial for the sustainability of social change beyond the funding period of the federal grant,” said Bauduy.

The skilled FIU-FACES social marketing team speaks three languages fluently – a critical asset given the linguistic needs of the target audiences – and all communication materials are produced in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole. A social media campaign is in the final stages and about to launch. It will utilize tools such as Facebook to disseminate stigma-reduction messages and engage youth in conversations about mental health and substance abuse issues.

Lorene Bauduy ’10 contributed to this story.