Understanding Barriers to Mental Health Care: A Community-Centered Perspective

As Mental Health Awareness Month comes to a close, conversations around mental health continue far beyond the month of May. Across the communities we serve, barriers to care remain one of the most significant challenges preventing youth, families, and individuals from accessing the support they need — whether due to stigma, financial hardship, cultural expectations, or systemic inequities.

For Jennifer Jimenez Wong, Program Director for Therapeutic Behavioral Services (TBS) San Mateo and Alameda,  these barriers are not abstract — they are deeply connected to the lived realities of the communities she has served for years.

Jennifer has long been committed to advancing culturally responsive mental health support and reducing stigma within underserved communities. Between 2013–2015, she served as a co-chair of the Filipino Mental Health Initiative (FMHI), helping support the early vision that would eventually grow into the  Kapwa Kultural Center & Café — a community-rooted space centered on healing, culture, and belonging.

Today, through her work at Fred Finch, Jennifer continues to see how stigma and systemic barriers intersect in ways that can delay or prevent people from accessing care.

“Mental health stigma, cost, transportation, waitlists, and lack of connection with providers all become barriers — and when people are trying to meet basic needs like housing and food, those barriers can feel impossible to overcome.”

For many families, these challenges are compounded by the realities of daily life — where basic needs such as housing, food, and financial stability must take priority. Even when support is needed, navigating systems like insurance or transportation can feel overwhelming or inaccessible.

Jennifer also highlights how stigma continues to shape whether people feel safe seeking help at all.

“When people hear the word ‘mental health,’ there is often an automatic stigma attached,” she explained. “They don’t want to be seen as ‘crazy’ or ‘weak,’ so many delay care until it becomes a crisis.”

These beliefs are often shaped early in life, reinforced through family messages and cultural expectations that discourage emotional expression or vulnerability. Over time, this can lead individuals to internalize shame around their emotions or delay seeking care until a crisis emerges.

At Fred Finch, participant-centered care plays a critical role in building trust. Our highly trained and dedicated staff work alongside youth and families, centering their voices, strengths, goals, lived experiences, and cultural identities — rather than prescribing a predetermined path for care. Through culturally responsive and relationship-based support, we strive to ensure particiapnts feel seen, heard, respected, and represented throughout the healing process. “We recognize that participants are experts on their own lives,” Jennifer shared. “We support them and their choices.”

Over time, this approach helps create safety and connection, allowing participants to “let their guard down” and engage more openly in the healing process.

While barriers to care remain significant, hope is also present in the everyday moments of progress — especially the small, meaningful signs of resilience that emerge in ongoing work with youth and families.

“Celebrating small wins and any small positive changes gives me hope and fills my heart,” Jennifer said. “People are resilient and although they may be going through tough times, they still keep showing up.”

Alongside Jennifer’s perspective on systemic barriers, Maren Geesey, Mental Health Therapist with the Specialized Wraparound program, offers a complementary reflection on the relational and whole-person foundations of care.

Maren supports children and young adults with developmental disabilities and their families, including those navigating autism, Down syndrome, and other medical or mental health needs. In her work, she deeply centers a participant-centered and biopsychosocial (BPSM) lens — understanding that mental health is shaped not only by emotions, but by the full context of a person’s life.

This includes:

• Biological factors, such as health conditions, sleep, and neurodevelopment

• Psychological factors, including trauma history, coping skills, and emotional regulation

• Social factors, such as family systems, culture, housing, education, and systemic inequities

This lens helps shift the focus from individual symptoms alone toward understanding what is happening in a person’s life and broader context.

For Maren, this framework is inseparable from how she shows up in practice — with presence, empathy, and an emphasis on relationship-based care.

“I believe in holding space for people, reminding them that their stories matter, and helping them hold onto hope when they may have lost their own. I can hold on to hope for them if they’ve lost theirs — they can borrow mine.”

She also reflects on mental health as something far more integrated than emotional experience alone: “Mental health is way more than our emotions — it is our relationships, our physical health, our routines, and how we move through the world.”

Together, Jennifer and Maren’s reflections offer a fuller picture of mental health care — both the systemic barriers that can delay access, and the human relationships and frameworks that make healing possible once support is found.

As Mental Health Awareness Month concludes, these voices remind us that mental health is not a single moment in time, but an ongoing commitment — to reducing barriers, building trust, and ensuring every person feels seen, valued, and supported in their care.

Program Overview: Therapeutic Behavioral Services (TBS) is a short-term, intensive, community-based mental health service that provides individualized, one-to-one support for youth experiencing serious emotional and behavioral challenges. TBS works in collaboration with existing services to help reduce behaviors that may place a young person at risk of hospitalization or out-of-home placement. Services are delivered in the home and community, where providers partner with youth and caregivers to build coping skills, strengthen routines, and support long-term stability across home, school, and community settings.

Specialized Wraparound is a team-based, family-centered service supporting children, youth, and young adults (ages 5–25) with developmental disabilities and complex emotional, behavioral, or mental health needs. The program brings together a small, consistent care team that works closely with families to identify strengths and needs, develop individualized plans, and support emotional and behavioral wellness across environments. Specialized Wraparound emphasizes collaboration, consistency, and family voice, ensuring care is responsive, culturally grounded, and centered on the lived experience of each young person and their family.