Mental Health

Asian Counseling and Referral Service (ACRS)

ACRS promotes social justice and the well-being and empowerment of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other underserved communities – including immigrants, refugees, and American-born – by developing, providing and advocating for innovative, effective and efficient community-based multilingual and multicultural services. ACRS services are available by appointment only.

Mental Health

Unmute

Umute has an emphasis on serving/benefiting traditionally muted or marginalized communities with an aim on de-stigmatizing mental health. In its search directory you can search by state and insurance provider. In a therapist profile you can learn about their focus areas, treatment modalities, finance information, and more in their bio.

Literature

The Primal Wound

This book is a “seminal work which revolutionizes the way we think about adoption. It describes and clarifies the effects of separating babies from their birth mothers as a primal loss which affects the relationships of the adopted person throughout life”. This book also discusses pre-and perinatal psychology, attachment, bonding, and loss and gives adoptees, whose pain has long been unacknowledged or misunderstood, validation for their feelings, as well as explanations for their behavior. Additionally, it lists “the coping mechanisms which adoptees use to be able to attach and live in a family to whom they are not related and with whom they have no genetic cues”. The hope is that this book will “contribute to the healing of all members of the adoption triad and will bring understanding and encouragement to anyone who has ever felt abandoned”.

Literature

Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today’s Parents

This is a comprehensive guide for prospective and current adoptive parents on ways to understand and care for the adopted child and promote healthy attachment. It provides “practical parenting strategies designed to enhance children’s happiness and emotional health” and explains “what attachment is, how grief and trauma can affect children’s emotional development, and how to improve attachment, respect, cooperation and trust”. The listed parenting techniques are “matched to children’s emotional needs and stages, and checklists are included to help parents assess how their child is doing at each developmental stage”. This book covers a wide range of issues including international adoption, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and learning disabilities. It is also geared as an important resource for adopted professionals.

Literature

Adoption Literature for Children and Young Adults: An Annotated Bibliography (Bibliographies and Indexes in Sociology)

This is an annotated bibliography that covers literature published from 1990 to 1991 suitable for children and young adults “dealing in some fashion with adoption”. There are 503 titles in this volume and are divided into fiction and nonfiction by reading level. “Most of the books included feature adoption as a main theme, others use adoption as a secondary theme, while others have characters who just happen to be adopted”. The bibliography encompasses topics such as “the age of arrival, sibling adoption, single-parent adoption, foster parent adoption, step-parent and relative adoption, transracial and intercountry adoption, Amerasian children, racial identity, minority families, special needs, large families, birthparents, search and reunion, surrogacy and open adoption, and some of the less pleasant aspects of adoption”. It is compiled by a reference librarian who is also an adoptive parent. There is also a featured selective resource list and directory of adoption-related organizations.

Literature

Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption

Sjöblom was adopted from Korea at two years old into a Swedish home. Throughout her childhood, she struggled to fit in and was constantly told to suppress her feelings of wanting to know more about her origins. Thus, she learned to bury the feelings of abandonment, like many other adoptees. In this illustrated memoir, “Sjöblom’s unaddressed feelings about her adoption come to a head when she is pregnant with her first child [and] she discovers a document containing the names of her biological parents”. She realizes “her own history may not match up with the story she’s been told her whole life: that she was an orphan without a background”. She ends up digging more into her background by traveling to Korea and the orphanage and finds out that the truth is “more complicated than the story she was told and struggled to believe”.

Scholarships

Scholarships.com: Disability Scholarships

This article gives a brief history of the Americans with Disabilities, details about scholarships, and a list of possible scholarships. Scholarships listed have a name, deadline, amount, and summary.

Scholarships

Scholarships360: “Top 75 Scholarships for Disabled Students in September 2023”

Scholarships360 lists 79 scholarships for disabled students in 2023, and a majority are college related. The descriptions include the title, amount, deadline, and application link.

College Consensus: “35 Scholarships for Students with Disabilities”

College Consensus offers a list of 35 scholarships for students with disabilities. An applicant will generally need proof of a disability before they can find scholarships, financial aid for students with disabilities, or anything offering free tuition. The nature of disability plays a strong role in what kind of aid will be available.

Scholarships

Family Resource Center on Disabilities: “Scholarships”

The Family Resource Center on Disabilities offers this list of scholarships that are available for “people with disabilities and come from foundations, organizations, or a broad range of other committed providers. The scholarships are open to all college students with disabilities, including students with learning disabilities.”

Resources