KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A new mental health resource just hit the Kansas City area, and it’s making mental wellness access easier for people of color.
Two women who live in Kansas City saw a need and filled the gap - the best part is it’s free.
The National Council for Mental Wellbeing said nearly half of all Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American people say they’ve experienced increased mental health challenges in the last year, but few have received treatment.
“I couldn’t keep up,” Brittany Talley, co-founder of the Color Collective Kansas City, said.
Talley, who is a licensed counselor, said the increase of clients began in 2020.
“A lot of it stemmed from George Floyd and the protests and all of the people begging for acknowledgment and begging for validation that came out of that, that summer,” she said. “By the fall, I think people were tired and needed someone, and I’d really like that person to look like me.”
Talley knew the importance of someone who truly understands what it feels like to be in your situation.
“I reached out to Megh Chakrabarti who is a social worker in our area and said, ‘Hey do you have any resources to get more people of color to therapists of color?’ Because those were the requests we were getting,” Talley said.
Their first question they had to answer: "Is there the need that we think there is?"
“There’s an overwhelming need,” Megh Chakrabati, co-founder of Color Collective Kansas City, said.
“We recognize that so many people are asking for this,” Talley said. “It’s not just you or your cousin, it’s a lot of people in our area. We saw such a need that we created a website for it.”
Through the Color Collective Kansas City, Chakrabarti and Talley have matched more than 200 people to therapists of color.
“People are starving for someone to listen to them,” Talley said.
“Those small subtle things that occur in the daily lives of people of color, often white therapists are not able to understand even though they want to,” Talley said.
Online, people can scroll through 40 therapists with different specialties and reach out to them to see if it’s a match.
“I feel like they felt they were being heard for the first time,” Chakrabarti said. “I do think the more we talk about this in the communities of color the more doors we open in communities of color.”
“We’ve been busy, we’ve been very busy,” Talley said. “It makes me feel overwhelmed because I know that if these are the people reaching out there are so many other people who don’t know where to get started.”
They say this is a way to continue the conversation and lessen the stigma.
“It really does help to have a non-white therapist, it can make the difference between life and death for some people,” Chakrabarti said.
Here are some mental health resources:
Color Collective Kansas City
Mental Health First Aid (MHFA)
Black and African American Communities and Mental Health | Mental Health America
Mental and Behavioral Health - African Americans - The Office of Minority Health
