Celebrating Immigrants in June

‍#CelebrateImmigrants

By: Madhuri Jha, LCSW, MPH (she/her/hers)

Director, Kennedy-Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity

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Washington Heights, New York, took the big screen by storm this month, as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s spectacular movie In the Heights sparked dialogue across the globe about representation and inclusivity in film. The movie is Miranda’s homage to a culturally rich, beautiful, and diverse pocket of uptown Manhattan, where 70% of the population is Spanish-speaking. It marks a particular victory in the film equity movement for Latinx communities.

While the film has been celebrated for its on-location shooting and majority Caribbean and Latinx cast, some have raised concerns about colorism, noting the underrepresentation of Afro-Latinx people in leading roles. This critique resonates with my work in the mental health equity movement, where the legacies of colonialism, systemic oppression, and racism often rear their heads — even as calls for cultural inclusivity continue to rise.

For years, I lived in and served upper Manhattan as a full-time bilingual (Spanish-English) child and family psychotherapist. Washington Heights is designated by HRSA as a medically underserved community, with too few primary care providers, high infant mortality, high poverty rates, and a large elderly population. The shortage of mental health services in such communities reflects a historic de-prioritization of mental health funding overall.

The outpatient Article 31 clinic where I worked was my first job after graduate training. As a first-generation Indian-American and a brown-skinned social worker who happened to speak Spanish, I was eager to translate my education into service for a high-needs immigrant community — one that in many ways resembled my own upbringing in Chicago. But the experience challenged many of the ideals I had been taught to consider integral to effective care.

Concepts like confidentiality, self-disclosure, trust-building, and even language choice were tested. Western clinical boundaries didn’t always fit the needs of a community where we were treating entire families — sometimes entire neighborhoods — in the same space. That experience redefined my belief in what an affirming, inclusive therapeutic environment could be. It reshaped the language I used to support patients from crisis to wellness.

Many immigrants come from countries where mental health services are either scarce or stigmatized. That stigma can persist through the cultural norms of their home country and deepen during the assimilation process in the U.S. Fortunately, New York State healthcare laws afford flexibility, allowing both documented and undocumented immigrants to receive care. That translates into Medicaid and private insurance coverage for documented immigrants, and affordable sliding scale fees for those without documentation.

Clinicians are trained to use language to inform patients about treatment, progress, and outcomes. But we often miss how deeply language, tone, and environment shape cultural experiences. Our clinic waiting room became a vibrant, emotionally safe space — a place where neighbors and friends gathered, exchanged family news, and said freely in Spanish: “Estoy esperando a mi terapeuta” — “I am waiting for my therapist.” That sentence, uttered in public, was itself an act of stigma reduction and normalization of mental illness.

Behind the waiting room door, a young patient could share fears about gang activity or explore questions about identity and sexuality. And yet, being the only clinic in the area, wait times stretched for months. Staff turnover was high, and demand routinely exceeded our capacity — especially for high-risk patients.

What In the Heights resurfaced for me is the ability to hold two truths: I can deeply appreciate affirming, inclusive spaces like that clinic, and I can also challenge the traditional norms of therapy that may unintentionally alienate the very people we seek to serve.

From that purview, I choose to #CelebrateImmigrants who triumph in communities like Washington Heights. In places where clinics may not be “traditional,” but where mental wellness has been woven into the fabric of everyday life. Ironically, that’s exactly what our treatment goals are meant to achieve — community-wide wellness and normalization of care.