LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A local attorney has made it her life's work to help provide vital services to those in the valley and rural Nevada.
As part of Hispanic Heritage Month, I bring you the story of a local Latina working to put mental health at the forefront.
LASTING IMPRESSION
"It is very low income, especially when I was growing up," said Franchesca Van Buren.
She says spending her childhood in Indian Springs, 45 miles outside Las Vegas, left a lasting impression.
"There were kids who were living with their grandma, their aunts. They weren't living with their parents," Van Buren said. "They were food insecure. They had suffered abuse. They were just kids who were having a really hard time."
Van Buren eventually left Indian Springs, earning a college degree and graduating from law school. But she never forgot the poor conditions back home.
"You moved on, became an attorney, and then you wanted to give back to your community?" I asked.
"Yes, because I heard that the people that I went to school with, a lot of them were on drugs. They were out on the streets. They had kids by that point," she said.
END THE CYCLE
Van Buren says she wanted to help end the destructive cycle she saw in these families. She created Insight Therapy Solutions, an after-school program providing therapy for children.
But Van Buren says it wasn't enough.
"We would bring therapists out from Las Vegas to kind of oversee the program," she said. "They would provide therapy to my kids, and they would bring them into a room and see them for 5 minutes at a time. And I thought to myself, look, I'm not a therapist, but this cannot be real therapy."
To provide improved services, she developed a full-fledged mental health clinic for all ages.
Then in 2020, The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. Van Buren says her business was forced to go virtual, and she was shocked by the results!
"Nobody wanted to go back to the office. The therapist didn't want to go back. The clients didn't want to go back. Our retention rates were up. I mean, it was amazing," Van Buren said. "But the wonderful thing about Telehealth is that it does allow us to expand our pool of therapists."
"And it seems like since the pandemic, mental health has really come to the forefront," I said.
"Oh, Big time... because now, all of a sudden, people understand how important mental health services really are," she said.
IMPROVEMENTS NEEDED
But as a Latina of Chilean descent, Van Buren says a lot of improvements still need to be made.
"In Nevada, 30 percent of the population is Hispanic, but 7 percent of therapists speak Spanish," she said. "How is somebody who is Hispanic going to walk into a therapist's office and look at somebody who just looks totally different from them? How are they going to explain their life to that person?"
Van Buren says Telehealth has allowed her to expand her pool of available therapists. Helping her to better pair her clients with the right person who can relate to their culture or upbringing.
