St. Cloud Times — They come from countries ravaged for decades by war. They’ve been displaced for months or years in a refugee camp in a foreign land. They are whisked away to far corners of the earth, often without their entire family.
They end up in St. Cloud, where snow and freezing temperatures are frightening and dangerous. They don’t speak the language and don’t have a family support network. They don’t even know how to order at an American restaurant or navigate public transit. Access to food, health care, education, resources has been limited. Instability is their normal.
And that’s just a typical refugee experience.
Any one of us could be shaken to our core after experiences like that. Many of us would come out with nightmares, uncertainty, anxiety, depression.
In 2013, a Somali immigrant saw the need in his fellow community members and opened a mental health clinic in St. Anthony.
Owner Asad Ahmed, as well as the clinical supervisor and counselors, all have their own tales of immigration and entry into Western society. They know too well the fear, the isolation that comes with being new to a country.
This week, Ahmed will have an open house for a second clinic, Recover Health Resources, in St. Cloud.
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Staff members need to get patients comfortable and willing to talk.
It starts when they walk in the door and see people working the desk who look like them: interns that speak the language, from undergraduate and graduate programs at St. Cloud State University.
