APA Foundation Announces Winners of Awards for Advancing Minority Mental Health

The American Psychiatric Association Foundation (APAF) announced the winners of its 2022 Awards for Advancing Minority Mental Health at its annual benefit Monday night held in conjunction with APA’s 2022 Annual Meeting. The awards were presented at a ceremony Tuesday.

Since 2003, the APA Foundation has recognized 99 community-based organizations with awards totaling $495,000 for their innovative and supportive work to raise awareness about mental illness in underserved minority communities. These efforts include promoting the early recognition of mental illness, improving access to quality mental health services, and addressing cultural barriers to treatment, with special attention to patients in the public health system or with severe mental illness. The awards include a financial contribution of $5,000 for each organization, as well as an engraved plaque and a featured article in APA’s Psychiatric News.

“Despite many uncertainties brought on or exposed by the pandemic, we are proud to recognize this select group of awardees for helping to advance mental health equity for our neighbors in need and their families,” said APAF Executive Director Rawle Andrews Jr., Esq. “We cannot meet the moment without them.”

This year’s winners are the following:

• Chaldean Community Foundation (CCF), founded in 2006, is dedicated to advancing the social, cultural heritage, and charity work with the Chaldean community in Sterling Heights, Mich. CCF works to improve the stability, health, and mental wellness of those they serve through advocacy, acculturation, community development, and cultural preservation.


• Good News Clinics, founded in 1992 in Gainesville, Ga., is a nonprofit organization providing free medical and dental care to uninsured residents of Hall County who cannot afford to purchase health care services. In 2015, the organization recognized the need to provide patients with mental health counseling and began providing one-on-one counseling, educational classes, and therapeutic groups.

• Memphis Family Connection Center was founded to provide access to holistic, mental health care to a highly vulnerable populations: adopted and foster care youth, which in Memphis includes many minority youth.


• The Mount Sinai Hospital Wellness Centre (MSHWC) is a community-based mental health program for Chinese-speaking individuals aged 65 years and older and their caregivers in Toronto. MSHWC is the only hospital-affiliated mental health program in Ontario—and one of the very few in North America—that is dedicated to providing language-specific and culturally sensitive mental health services to Chinese-speaking older people.


• Postpartum Support International (PSI) promotes awareness, prevention, and treatment of mental health issues related to childbearing around the world. PSI promotes this vision through advocacy and collaboration, and by educating and training the professional community and the public.


• Starting Right, Now (SRN), based in Tampa, Fla., aims to end homelessness for youth by providing one-on-one mentoring and a stable home, assisting with employment opportunities, teaching financial literacy and other life skills, and promoting educational achievement. SRN fulfills physiological/safety needs first by providing free, long-term housing to unaccompanied, homeless youth, then engages its residents in holistic healing.


• The New York Foundling provides mental health treatment and social services targeted to the needs, strengths, and cultures of its diverse community. The organization is committed to eliminating disparities. Specific programs center on three underserved communities: LGBTQIA+ youth and their families, the deaf community, and Latinx and African American families in Harlem. ■