Tlingit & Haida behavioral health services reaches out across Southeast

In November of last year, Tlingit & Haida Community and Behavioral Services opened a healing center in Juneau to provide care to tribal citizens and other Alaska Natives.

At the time, care was provided through Zoom Health or over the phone. The center was able to open its doors this year for in-person appointments but still relies on telehealth to reach a greater number of patients who might not have access to such services otherwise.

Healing center staff provides a mix of wholistic healing and western treatment for crisis and access help, mental health issues — such as relationship challenges, mood disorders, eating disorders, soul wounds and risk behaviors — addiction, psychological assessment and re-entry and recovery housing for tribal citizens who are coming out of incarceration or a treatment facility.

Tina Woods, director of the center and a licensed clinical-community psychologist, said many of the issues they see patients for are often derived from intergenerational trauma that stems from boarding schools, internment camps and missionaries putting Native cultures and languages on pause, causing Indigenous people to lose their sense of self. That trauma filters down through the generations, she said.

“Even if someone came in for anxiety, there’s so much more than that anxiety,” Woods, who is Aleut, said. “It is no secret trauma and co-occurring disorders exist among Native people. Behind those statistics are human beings.”

Older generations tend not to talk about the traumas they experienced, Woods said. “When you oppress things, it will come out somehow,” whether through addiction, behavioral issues or other mental and emotional problems.

Zoom Health helps the healing center reach communities like Wrangell, where tribal citizens might not otherwise have access to the type of support Tlingit & Haida provides at the healing center. There is less of a stigma to mental health treatment when treatment can be done in the privacy of one’s own home.

“I know a lot of people (in Wrangell) get support from their church, their culture, their families, also that’s a double-edged sword,” said Valerie Massie, IGAP coordinator for the Wrangell Cooperative Association, who has a psychology degree from University of Alaska Anchorage. “I’ve heard people say, ‘I would never get a counselor here because I don’t want to see my counselor at City Market.’”

Massie said geographical barriers, such as living on an island, make getting treatment difficult. When she learned of the healing center, she was excited because it offers a sense of connectedness to tribal members.

“If it’s coming from your own tribe, I would hope there’s a greater level of trust there,” Massie said.

Woods said out of the 11 staff that provide care at the healing center, only one is non-Native and one is Native from another tribe but was adopted into a clan. The rest are tribal citizens, which leads to the sense of connectedness and trust they are trying to convey.

“We have so much gratitude that people went away to get education and returned to serve their people,” Woods said. “When you’re with someone who grew up the way you grew up, there’s less to explain and trust happens more rapidly.”

SEARHC Wrangell Behavioral Health provides many of the same services, such as substance use disorder and mental health treatment, according to Lyndsey Schaefer, director of marketing and communications for SEARHC. “Services include individual, family and group counseling, case management and rehabilitative services as well as psychiatric medication management both in person and by telehealth.”

Those services are open to anyone, Native or not.

The healing center is focused on tribal citizens, yet they do recognize certain caveats exist.

“It’s built for our tribal citizens,” Woods said. “Some tribal citizens marry non-tribal citizens. They have tribal citizen children. We’re healing the family.”

Massie, though not Native, said she feels a responsibility as a staff member of WCA “to know what services are out there and to be able to refer someone at least to someone who might know more than me.”

The sense of tribal connectedness is something Woods is seeing more of, especially in the younger generations.

“I’ve been seeing this new generation, early 20s, craving their culture,” she said. “’I’m interested in returning home. I want to know who I am.’ They experience a rush of emotions. ‘I don’t know why I’m feeling this.’ You are feeling like you’re returning home. It’s very spiritual. It’s a sense of recognizing you belong somewhere.”

Woods said in order to deal with intergenerational trauma, clients need to talk about it and walk through the healing process, not around or over it, and it begins with connection.

“Sense of connection can be as quick as the sound of a drum,” she said. “Programs don’t heal, relationships heal.”

To learn more about the Tlingit & Haida healing center, visit cbs.ccthita-nsn.gov.

 

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