Mental Health and Well-being
At MCN, we understand that mental health and well-being are fundamental to our overall health. They are crucial components that influence how we think, feel, and act in our daily lives. Sadly, access to resources and essential mental health services is not equitable; many individuals, particularly those in marginalized communities, face significant barriers to care. Social determinants of health (SDOH) -- the conditions in which people live, work, and play -- factor into health outcomes. These outcomes are not distributed equally. Climate change is also emerging as a significant factor affecting mental health, particularly for vulnerable populations. The increasing frequency of natural disasters, forced migration, and environmental degradation associated with climate change exacerbates stress, anxiety, and trauma, further compounding challenges to well-being. Finally, we understand that mental health and well-being are impacted by the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status and immigration status, making life further challenging for historically marginalized people.
MCN addresses these complex mental health and well-being factors through an anti-racist and trauma-informed approach. We are committed to addressing these challenges by providing culturally responsive and accessible resources and frameworks to community health center clinicians, essential workers, farmworkers, and migrant workers. We equip both individuals and organizations with the tools they need to create supportive environments where well-being is a priority.
We Offer
Peer Support Groups
Isolation is a common response to feeling overwhelmed. By contrast, social support is the most effective and efficient way to cope with stress. MCN offers facilitated open enrollment peer support groups utilizing the witnessing model as the primary framework.
Interactive Webinars
We offer individualized interactive webinars and accompanying resources, each of which are archived. Topics may include but are not limited to the witnessing model, empathic stress disorders, moral injury, individual resilience, organizational resilience, community resilience, vicarious resilience, creating trauma sensitive environments, reasonable hope, practical self-care strategies, team meeting debrief structures, and more.
Resource Development
We develop resources that are comprehensive, culturally responsive, and tailored to specific audiences.
Learning Collaboratives
We offer a multi-week, practical learning collaborative for supervisors and administrators to help them develop both individual and organizational resilience in a trauma-informed manner.
Our Approach
Whether we realize it or not, we are all witnesses to violence and violation in our daily lives. Whether we witness a distressing event in person, hear about it from others, or see it through social media or on television, exposure to these types of events or stories creates what is known as "common shock." This term was coined by Dr. Kaethe Weingarten (Founder and Advisor, The Witness to Witness program) to capture the widespread, yet often unnoticed, impact that witnessing violence and violation can have on our mind, body, and spirit. For many of us, over exposure to stories of hardship, trauma and suffering can create common shock.
The witnessing model was developed by Dr. Weingarten in the 1990s to help people understand that they were experiencing common shock and provide ideas about how to mitigate the harmful effects. The model asserts that there are four witness positions. Ideally, one is in Position One, where one is aware and empowered, able to respond with clarity and effectiveness. However, we may find ourselves in any of the other three positions. In Position Two, we are actually unaware of what is truly happening and so our responses are misguided and may even be harmful. In Position Three, we are either oblivious or purposefully managing what we witness by zoning out. Position Four is the most common position of all, where we are perfectly aware of what we are witnessing but lack either the internal or external resources to respond effectively. This position saps our energy, leaving us frustrated and demoralized. This is the witness position that can lead to burnout.
Recognizing our witness position is crucial, as it provides the opportunity to consciously move toward a more empowered and effective stance, where we can reduce harm and build individual and organizational resilience.
At MCN, we incorporate this approach into all our mental health and wellbeing programs, ensuring that clinicians, essential workers, and others on the frontlines have the support they need to continue their vital work while caring for their own wellbeing.
Other key frameworks we utilize
Reasonable hope is achievable:
It’s not pie in the sky. It’s not wishing for something that’s not attainable with effort in the here and now. With reasonable hope we set our sights on what we can accomplish together, now.
Self-care isn’t selfish:
It’s what we need to do to care for the communities of which we are a part, whether our families, our work teams or our friends. Self-compassion helps us do self-care. When we have compassion for ourselves, we act like our own best friend.
There are multiple sources of resilience:
Individual, team, family, friendship, nature, religion, cultures, ancestors and more. When we have difficulty accessing one, we can turn to another.
There may be boulders in our path, but pebbles in our shoes can still be a bother:
When we remove the pebbles, we are more likely to join with others to figure out the levers that will push those boulders out of the way.
Resources
Resources for Workplace Well-Being
Resources for Families and Young People
Spanish
- Bienestar Emocional
https://open.spotify.com/show/5arRtGLHyIk9LmFt2pZe1W - Dr. Mario Alonso Puig
https://open.spotify.com/show/4hz0jLXfWc9jzCsAybaSgI - Podcast Hablemos de tu Salud
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8eRsVyIDwRfrZNqM7ijl3g_PnXzqSyzk&feature=shared - El Podcast de Marian Rojas Estape
https://open.spotify.com/show/2xV7Vx7NQgAC8vMt2vZNnE
Resources for Farmworkers, Migrants, and Essential Workers
Cultivemos – a network for farmer well-being.
Migrant Clinicians Network is a member of Cultivemos (formerly known as FRSAN-NE, the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network Northeast), which aims to improve behavioral health awareness, literacy, access, and outcomes for farmers, ranchers, and farmworkers in the Northeast by developing a service provider network that can assist and meet their unique needs.
- Farmer Resource Network
https://farmaid.my.site.com/FRN/s/
- Cultivemos YouTube
https://youtube.com/@cultivemos6929?feature=shared - Capsulas de Bienestar
https://youtube.com/@agricultoreslatinesenvermont?feature=shared - La Fuerza Latina Magazine
Los que siembran con sus manos cosechan con el corazón. - Podcasts
Cultivating Resilience - If you’re a farmer, you know the joys of working the land. You also know how stressful it can be—from family and financial pressures, to isolation and an exhausting job that has zero days off. In fact, agricultural workers experience suicide rates that are 50% higher than the national average, and that number is rising. On the Cultivating Resilience podcast, farm care starts with self-care. Hear from other farmers about the struggles they face every day and how they are overcoming them. Get connected to #farmermentalhealth resources and a community where farmers and ranchers can support each other when you tune in. Please share the show with someone you think it may help. Check out the podcast Cultivating Resilience below, or wherever you get your podcasts:
Past Projects
- NACES
- Family Violence Prevention
- Resilience Workforce Curriculum
- Pilot for VdS
The Witness to Witness Origin Story
The Witness to Witness (W2W) Program was launched in the summer of 2018 in response to the overwhelming needs of clinicians and attorneys working on the frontlines of the immigration process at the Southern border. Founded and directed by Dr. Weingarten, W2W was built on her Witnessing Model, which emphasizes that we are all daily witnesses to events and actions that challenge our sense of what is right, good, or healthy. How we manage our witnessing profoundly affects not only ourselves and those we serve but also our families, colleagues, and communities. In February 2020, the W2W Program joined forces with MCN to further expand its reach and impact.
The Witnessing Model was developed by Dr. Kaethe Weingarten and served as the foundation for The Witnessing Project, which ran from 1999 to 2017. The Witnessing Project worked with individual, families, and communities to transform the passive witnessing of violence and violation to effective action in a variety of contexts—from violence in the home to post conflict societies, to families suffering with medical illness to those going through the process of dying. Currently, the model helps account for the experience of people living with Long COVID.