Guest commentary: The Oxnard Multicultural Mental Health (OMMH) Coalition is established

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By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor

I have written extensively about my precarious mental health state and my many battles that I have waged attempting to exorcise the ghosts, monsters and devils that that attack me when I fall periodically to the dark side of my lifelong illness. I have listened to countless brothers and sister of my community recount their struggles with mental illness, and almost to a person we express the same lifelong battles with anger, rage, alienation, fear, futility, abandonment, worthlessness,  a sense that in all our pain we are invisible to the greater society and infected with a disease that no can cure!  Pathetically I tried to tame my monsters with alcohol and drugs that did not work; they almost killed me!

My therapy and salvation has been my confessional and redemptive writing. Nothing seems to help as much as when I put my honest pain to paper. The confessional narrative works on me; after 20 years of work with the affected communities and we know that the oral/writing confessional narrative protocols can work on other; and so the Dirty Little Secrets, Las Salseras and the KEYS Leadership Academy oral and writing programs were born.  The confessional narrative programs were developed and designed by Dr. Deborah De Vries and myself to provide a culturally congruent healing treatment for many of our at risk, poor, marginalized, and “invisible” youth and families that live in greater Oxnard.

As we at the Café on A have shared our mental health issues and concerns, the community of Oxnard has responded and shared their mental health battles, both victories and defeats. Out of this community pain and sharing the Oxnard Multicultural Mental Health (OMMH) Coalition was formed.

The OMMH is moving with great deliberation and purpose. In our last meeting one of the local activist/experts presented the work that has been done in the past by the local black community and the work that he has done with the county of Ventura with respect to addressing mental health/Alcohol and Drug Disorders treatment disparities. Other member of our coalition enlightened the group about the post Jim Crow racist climate that Blacks and persons of color live through every day and how the insidious effects of that racism affect local and national societal comportment and norms. Another coalition member spoke about the nontraditional “remedios” for mental health illness that were used by the elders of  his home and community to help alleviate”nervios” (anxiety) using messages, vapor, pomadas , and medicinal herbs. The member went on to state that these mental health “remedios” has a legitimate place in the treatment modalities in the Latino culture.

The OMMH coalition agreed to move toward mental health multicultural commonality, positive programming enhancements, expansion and support, and an urgent fundamental and core need to conduct a city/county wide special populations (Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, LGBT and others) needs assessment of needs, gaps, programs and opinion on a variety of mental health treatments (both traditional and non-traditional), concerns, gaps, disparities. Here are the specific goals and objectives agreed to by The OMMH through consensus:

1.  The OMMH coalition requires training ASAP to prepare the ambassadors/promotores for the needs assessment/data gathering protocol.

2.  The OMMH Coalition should receive training by the California Reducing Disparities project, and have this organization assist in the development, design and roll out of our local and special population’s specific assessment tools and protocols.

3. The OMMH identify local programs, treatments, protocols that work in our special population’s communities, i.e., drum circle, music, dance, writing therapy, KEYS Leadership Academy and any other program that is working to mitigate mental health illness in our community.

4. The OMMH meet with the county and the city political leadership to present our coalition, our goals and objectives and secure buy-in and funding to begin this initial special populations mental health assessment tool completed and rolled out into the community with our professionally trained special population ambassadors/promotores.

5. The OMMH continue to meet on a weekly basis so that we can complete the initial mental health assessment and data gathering protocol ASAP.

6. The OMMH expand its current coalition membership so that all special populations can be represented at the ground floor so that they can develop their own assessment protocols that are unique to their populations.

7. The OMMH expand its educational, information and public relations campaign throughout greater Oxnard and Ventura County.

On November 1, 2014, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) of Ventura County issued a scathing expose on the mismanagement of the mental health services delivery to the Latino community throughout Ventura County. We at the OMMH coalition know that we are acutely underserved and largely “invisible” to the current institutional structure that is tasked in helping us address our mental health illnesses and treatments. For this reason, the OMMH is taking and wrestling with the “mental health monsters” with our own hands and minds and attempting to forge mental health protocols, treatments and programs that are culturally congruent with our minority populations and in the process helping create a better mental health system for everyone in Ventura County. Please us joins, we can all get healthy together, if we respect and appreciate each other unique and diverse mental health needs.

— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., is the executive director of The KEYS Leadership Academy@ Café on A in Oxnard.