By Sabriya Dobbins: Founder of Project Passport

Yazmin Coleman never thought that she would end up in social work. Upon working in fields like dental health and office management, a college counselor opened the world of social work up to her and she never looked back. After graduating with her MSW in 2017, she worked as a school therapist in Chatham and Orange counties. Eventually she matriculated into more intensive mental health services at Holly Hill hospital where she served as an inpatient therapist for the geriatric and medically compromised.

One of her main convictions is that it is our job as a society to help support people before they end up as inpatients. She explains,

“If there wasn’t such a stigma in mental health and there were more resources and we were working hard as a community to serve one another, there would be less burnout in professionals and less inpatient clients.” 

Early on in her experience, she began to see the money-focused system of mental health rise. Insurance companies are often looking in their own best interests and not in the patients’ interests she observed. One of the major trends that “make her skin crawl” is the rapid diagnosis of children at an early age. Professionals are quick to put children on medications simply because they may be overactive. This only serves as a temporary fix. The children live their lives out misdiagnosed and parents are often not truly aware of their child’s situation. Yazmin states,

“Teachers are not trained to give the extra support some children may need on a day-to-day and school counselors are usually only there when something happens to the child.”

Our system clearly has some fundamental issues that stem from childhood. Furthermore, Yazmin found working with young, minority clients rewarding because she knew it was all about education and trust. While explaining one of her common techniques, she shared,

“With my approach for hesitant parents, I made it more like they were just coming to talk. I let the children talk about what they wanted to discuss. I would meet them where they were at.”

She believes therapists have to have a genuine interest in what is going on in the lives of others. They can easily overlook what a client needs in the moment if they don’t pay attention. Yazmin tailored all of her therapy sessions to the client because each client had different world views. However, she was always cognizant of maintaining her own self-care in the midst of it call.

When asked what she loved most about her role in therapy, she stated,

 “I loved the outcomes most. When I saw the time being spent leading to the goals being addressed after the long hours and everything, it felt good. Seeing the professional relationships with clients grow and having rapport and loyalty with clients was really rewarding.”

Currently, she serves as the ACTT Team lead for B&D Integrated Healthcare Services, continuing the mission of helping people gain access to proper mental health services.

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Project Passport is a mental empowerment retreat and event company created to help women connect with one another and gain the tools to improve their lives in the best way possible. Each retreat experience has a unique theme with carefully designed activities to help participants grow and experience transformation. We are making mental wellness the norm, one retreat at a time. Learn more at project-passport.com.