I always say that I was chosen by my profession because I never thought about working with the profession I work with today.
I always liked working in an office setting and in the Human Resources area. I also found a way to help people qualify and get a good job. But my relocation to New York did not allow me to remain in the HR area because of my fear of speaking English in a department that I needed to be fluent in, and the labor laws are totally different from the laws of Brazil.
I am an adaptable person and I quickly thought of specializing in another area that I could work on.
While I was taking a course to improve my English, the teacher gave me the idea of taking a specialization course in child development and I started working in 2012 with American children with different types of physical and mental disabilities.
It was an incredible experience; I learned a lot and realized the difficulty of parents and caregivers have. Having a family structure and support is essential, but unfortunately not everyone has it and I felt the need to help families in this area.
I went back to college to study human services and sociology. I was hired to be a Family Support Specialist with emphasis on child development. During those years providing support to families, I started studying mental health because the goal was to educate families to have a healthy family, to reduce domestic violence and especially child abuse. Parents and caregivers need to be in good physical and mental health in order to care for children efficiently.
So I started to get more and more interested in the subject and nowadays I am a Mental Health Aide. My job is to guide families and my clients so that they can take care of their health and have an adequate quality of life.
I'm not a psychologist as many people think, I don't diagnose, but I can guide my clients to seek professional help. My mission is to raise awareness and try to reduce prejudice against mental health.
I learned a lot about positive psychology when I was studying a master's degree program in Psychology, and it was proven by several studies that gratitude has the power to positively impact people's lives. Practicing gratitude can help improve our mental health.
Today I went back to work with human resources, but in a role linked to social work. I lost the fear of speaking in English even if I'm not 100% fluent and that was an achievement for me.
I work with low-income people in upstate New York who are receiving government assistance and need to find a job.
I take an initial assessment to find out which area clients need support, see what each one's goals are and connect with the resources that we have in the community.
If a person is not in good mental health or is starving, the last thing the person will be able to keep is a job. So my focus is to provide all the support for clients to overcome difficulties and seek specialized help.
We know that there are many stigmas and prejudices regarding mental health and with that many people are suffering in silence without professional help and correct treatment. Therefore, I had the initiative to share on my social networks the subject that I already work on a daily basis to raise awareness and try to gain an understanding of mental health conditions.
The more people become aware, we will have less prejudice in the world and more people will seek mental health care.
