At Community Resource Center, we’re dedicated to addressing the complex needs of our unsheltered neighbors. Last year, with the help of seed funding from the Lucky Duck and Greathouse Family Foundations, CRC took a significant step forward in its dedication to helping others by hiring a dual diagnosis clinician. I want to take this opportunity to give you an update …
Our clinician, Maina, is uniquely equipped to address the intertwined challenges of mental health and substance abuse disorders. She is a part of the multidisciplinary team at CRC, which includes a bilingual victim advocate, psychologist, and psychiatrist, to assist underserved clients in coping with and recovering from trauma. Maina shares, “We take a holistic approach to each client. It’s helpful to have a therapist who can work with clients and in collaboration with the whole team. One client may have multiple staff members helping them and all working toward the same goals.”
Like our entire social services team, Maina adopts a client-centered approach to helping participants work towards their goals. Clients are working towards goals such as obtaining and sustaining housing, finding or improving employment, and improving budgeting and daily living skills. Maina meets with clients to provide mental health and/or substance abuse treatment, crisis stabilization assessment, assistance with housing placements, and referrals for additional services as needed.
Many clients are in the process of obtaining housing or were recently housed and the team works to help them sustain their new housing after experiencing homelessness. “Homelessness is traumatic,” Maina says. “Especially right now in San Diego, getting affordable housing is very hard. Having a clinician to support the clients and the staff is important.”
One client Maina met with was Paula, a survivor of domestic violence who experienced a transformational change. “In the span of working with me, she was in and out of an abusive relationship. Now she is a year out of the relationship. Her abuser had accused her of being addicted to certain things. Once she was out of the relationship, Paula realized that what she had been experiencing was a coping mechanism for the trauma she was experiencing. Now she is able to prioritize and protect herself and make healthy choices, and that’s been really transformative for her.”
Maina shares, “Every client I work with is experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), so trauma recovery is a main piece of the work I’m doing with them. We use cognitive-processing therapy for PTSD, which targets the cognitions people are experiencing.”
Maina was inspired to become a Dual Diagnosis Clinician to help her community: “I previously worked as a group counselor at a residential rehab facility and that made me go back to school to get my graduate degree. I was born and raised in Encinitas, and I happened to find CRC. For me it’s really special to be able to provide such an important service back to the community I was born and raised in. These are clients who wouldn’t have access to this therapy otherwise. These clients really need and deserve this service.”
By integrating a dual diagnosis clinician into our team, Maina helps CRC provide more comprehensive and effective care, addressing the root causes of homelessness and fostering long-term stability and recovery. This approach not only improves individual outcomes but also strengthens our community as a whole, aligning with our commitment to creating a brighter, more inclusive future for all.
