WEDNESDAY, April 24, 2024
3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. PT
Session 3 of 4 in the "Rooting Young Adult Mental Health Services in Culturally Sustaining Values & Practices" Series (view series main page for full details)
This session’s essential question is: How might we challenge the deficit model permeating prevention and recovery to make space for culturally sustaining perspectives and practices in the field?
All community-based organizations, institutions, and mental health professionals, including peer support specialists, therapists, psychologists, counselors, and others who support the mental health and wellness of transition-aged youth.
Oriana Ides, MA, APCC, PPS (she/hers)
Oriana Ides is a School Mental Health Training Specialist at CARS (the Center for Applied Research Solutions) and approaches healing the wounds of trauma and oppression as core elements of social justice. She has worked with young people across the life course from elementary school to college, and has served as teacher-leader, school counselor, classroom educator and program director. She is committed to generating equity within school structures and policies by focusing on evidence-based mental health techniques and institutional design.
Falilah “Aisha” Bilal (she/her)
Falilah “Aisha” Bilal has worked joyously for over 30 years creating innovative, relevant evidence-based strategies to transform, empower and develop individuals, systems, organizations and contemporary thought.
Ms. Bilal’s work is centered in healing practices, empowering youth and families, and self-discovery. Ms. Bilal specializes in the field of youth development, healing informed organizational development, and strategic fundraising consultation.
Currently Ms. Bilal serves as the Chief of Staff for the Black Organizing Project as well as directs her own consulting company where she provides trainings, curriculum development, healing experiences, coaching, and executive leadership to local and national agencies, companies and programs. Previously, Ms. Bilal served as a Senior Trainer with the National Black Women’s Justice Institute and a Radical Healer with Flourish Agenda. She served as the Executive Director for M.I.S.S.S.E.Y. raising over 2 million dollars in funds to support sexually exploited children and young adults. She has worked for numerous Bay Area agencies including World Trust, Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, Oakland Bay Area CARES Mentoring Movement, GirlSource, Office of Family, Children and Youth, City of Oakland, and the Young Women’s Freedom Center.
Ms. Bilal holds a M.A. in Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a B.A. in Theater Arts and Child Psychology from San Francisco State University.
Maurice Byrd, LMFT (he/him)
Maurice Byrd is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist working as a harm reductionist for the past 20 years. He is a clinical supervisor, and has collaborated in the development and implementation of community mental health programs for people experiencing chronic mental health disorders, substance use disorders, and experiencing homelessness. During his career, he has worked with adolescents and adults. He has provided mental health services in middle schools, high schools, in private practice settings, in the San Francisco County Jail system, in San Quentin prison, in homeless drop-in centers, at needle exchanges, and on the sidewalk with people experiencing homelessness.
He trains, teaches, supervises, and provides consultation to both clinical and non-clinical staff at several non-profit agencies nationally, primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area and is often invited to speak as a voice for harm reduction therapy. Maurice specializes in teaching the fundamentals of practicing Harm Reduction Psychotherapy. He also enjoys teaching about facilitating groups and led a Harm Reduction Marijuana Group for system exposed young adults that he facilitated for 8 years.
Maurice has been trained in MDMA for PTSD with MAPS and Ketamine assisted therapy. He also provides individual and group KAT therapy in his private practice. He has taught in the MFT program at Holy Names University in Oakland, CA focusing on Substance Use interventions and Community Mental Health. He is a published author, cowriting the chapter Dealing with Drug Use After Prison: Harm Reduction Therapy in the book Decarcerating America.
Tonia Herrero (she/her)
Tonia Herrero is the owner and supervising Art Therapist of East Bay Art Therapy. Tonia is a cisgendered woman with Spanish, Ashkenazi, Irish and Native American (Sac and Fox) ancestry. Tonia is a Board Certified Art Therapist and Certified Supervisor with the Art Therapy Credentials Board and a Licensed Certified Art Therapist in the state of Oregon. She has over eight years of clinical experience in the field of art therapy and specializes in helping adolescent boys access, express and process emotions and trauma as well as find healthy ways to express and manage their anger. Additionally, Tonia specializes in adolescents and adults of all genders with substance-use concerns (or in recovery from addiction/alcoholism) as well as dual-diagnosis (substance-use plus mental health diagnosis/es). Tonia has long term sobriety/recovery herself and is passionate about working with folks in recovery or wanting to enter recovery from substance-abuse. For decades, Tonia has demonstrated an innate talent and ability to build positive rapport with adolescents, especially teen boys. Her approach to art therapy is trauma-informed and draws influence from Internal Family Systems (IFS), Relational Psychodynamic and Humanistic theories such as Person-Centered, Existential, and Gestalt. She is also trained in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) which informs her approach. Tonia is a Health At Every Size (HAES) and Intuitive Eating informed therapist which informs her work with clients struggling with their relationship to food and body image.
