Mental Health Associates, Inc. has opened the Bay State’s only group home devoted to LGBTQ people working with addictions and mental health issues. The state- and locally certified, 16-bed Yale Street facility in Holyoke, Mass. began welcoming clients this week, reports MassLive.com.
“We’re hoping we can have 16 people periodically be able to graduate and go on to live independent lives without needing anything but the support everybody gets in their lives,” Bonnie O’Donnell, the home’s program director, told MassLive, which reports:
The LGBTQ community, particularly transgender clients, need safe environments for recovery, O’Donnell said.
“They don’t feel safe being themselves in a community of people in recovery if they’re not sure if they’re accepted,” she said. “Recovery is hard enough to do. But when you add on all kinds of other issues such gender discrimination or gender dysphoria, it just adds another layer of difficulty.” …
“This has attracted a lot of attention in the provider community. Folks in the LGBTQ community tend to have experienced varying degrees of trauma throughout their lives,” [Mental Health Associates’ vice president of Development and Branding Kimberly] Lee said. “Adding that with substance abuse makes a program like this that much more important because it’s very specific.”
Cordero Crenshaw, a program supervisor, said, “It’s essential to create a place where individuals can focus on their recovery and, at the same time, focus on their life skills to be successful once they leave this program.”
Read the full story on MassLive.com.
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