'Rebuild, uplift and empower': Local organization tackling mental health through free program
People in need of mental health assistance now have a new program to turn to, organizers want to remove the stigma and get North Omaha the help they're looking for.
People in need of mental health assistance now have a new program to turn to, organizers want to remove the stigma and get North Omaha the help they're looking for.
People in need of mental health assistance now have a new program to turn to, organizers want to remove the stigma and get North Omaha the help they're looking for.
A new, bright space.
"We work to rebuild, uplift and empower our community and whatever that looks like," said Tamika Mease.
Welcoming an organization to the fight against social and economic issues plaguing North Omaha.
"We're dealing with crime, dealing with poverty, you know, on top of the pandemic, it just makes it harder to kind of navigate through surviving and survival," Mease said.
Mease is the founder and executive director of North Omaha Community Partnership. Since their start in 2019, they've expanded their outreach throughout the city.
"We don't limit ourselves to just North Omaha, we do go where the need is, and it just seems like the need right now is in North Omaha," she said.
Taking on the latest challenge through their Bridge the Gap program while creating a place of their own in the very community they serve.
"That's where we come in, we offer the therapy services for individual, group or family within 24 to 48 hours," Mease said.
Whether someone is in a crisis or undergoing trauma, Bridge the Gap is there with help first and focuses on payment later.
"It opens the doors and the opportunities for us to serve, you know, more people, for us to have more therapists involved," she said.
Mease said if they don't have insurance or the money to cover each session, they introduce a form of payment based on what they can afford.
"There are financial barriers, there's insurance barriers, there's all kinds of things that keep people from actually pursuing it," said Leontyne Evans.
Shifting the focal point from money and instead connecting them with a mental health therapist wherever they need it. Whether it's at Charles Drew, their home or at The Relationship Corner with Evans.
"I'm dealing with people grieving, physical loss and actual death, but then you're grieving relationships, you're grieving the life you thought you were going to have. There's so much loss that people are grieving and they don't realize it's grief," Evans said.
She said almost 90% of her caseload is 16- and 20-year-olds ready to change and break the generational trauma.
Evans said, "Young adults that are realizing, 'To go into adulthood, I might need to heal some things.'"
As the community outreach chair, Sherman Wells said Bridge the Gap gives them a new tool to use when people need help.
"The issue I was running into with mental health, I had nowhere to take them to where they could afford the services," Wells said.
He said he works directly with kids through the Bryant Center, but his outreach doesn't stop at the youth — it typically reaches their parents.
"It is the root cause to the majority of their issues, is the mental health piece that we're not facing, we're not dealing with it, we're not talking about it," Wells said.
Leading to a never-ending cycle of trauma but with North Omaha's latest addition, Wells hopes it creates a ripple effect within the community.
"Now it's time we face it, especially here in Omaha because we have such a close-knit community, if we can get a few people to do it, and then they see us, OK, more and more people will take on that role," he said.