Credit: (Photo Courtesy of Neha Darji)As mental health services remain in high demand, professionals statewide continue to address the needs of New Jerseyans from diverse backgrounds, including South and East Asian women and women of color.
Nearly 5% of the state’s population is South Asian, the highest percentage in the country, according to data from Indian American Impact, a national organization that aims to promote “the voices of Indian Americans, South Asians and all historically excluded communities.” The organization also notes that Indian Americans make up the largest ethnic group of Asian Americans living in the state.
Now, some behavioral health professionals, including Neha Darji, are working to address those needs by offering teletherapy services to South and East Asian women and women of color in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Darji, a licensed professional counselor, founded We Rise Therapy and Wellness in 2019 and today offers specialized behavioral health treatment for first-generation clients, adult children of immigrants, Asian American and Pacific Islander populations and Black and Indigenous people.
The agency, based in Mount Laurel, currently offers telehealth services through a team of South and East Asian therapists. Over the past six months, the company has grown significantly, according to Darji, and currently serves well over 100 clients ranging in age from 14 years old to their late 60s.
NJ Spotlight News spoke with Darji about founding her company and what more needs to be done for the physical and mental health care of women of color throughout the state. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
NJ Spotlight News: What inspired you to create We Rise Therapy?
Neha Darji: What really inspired me to start We Rise Therapy and Wellness is … I really had a vision for creating a bigger impact in some way. Talking about mental health, talking about our feelings, vulnerability, struggles and challenges, was modeled very early on for me as something that was not normalized in my culture and my community. Growing up as a second-generation daughter of immigrant parents, there was this idea of wanting to make your parents feel proud and push through struggle.
And so, I really envisioned myself creating a career that helped people understand that … it’s not weakness to have feelings, to talk about struggles, to have challenges and to need support in that. I felt that the community I was surrounded by — extended family, my cousins — hadn’t modeled that for me and I really wanted to change that path.
NJSN: When you moved to New Jersey in 2017 from Chicago, what was your reaction to the mental health care that was offered specifically for South and East Asian women and women of color?
ND: I saw very large gaps. The first job that I had was doing in-home work with kids, and actually the owner of the agency was South Asian herself. We really talked about the challenges in South Asian families and the referrals that we were receiving weren’t enough South Asian families … There was something happening that these communities were not seeking out services. Either they didn’t know that services existed, they didn’t seek out services, or it wasn’t accessible for them in the language or the type of way that they needed to be recruited. I saw that early on in moving to New Jersey. It was very different from Chicago. Chicago was a melting pot. I was constantly surrounded by diversity. Moving to New Jersey … it was hard to adjust because I struggled in understanding the communities [and] what the communities’ needs were.
NJSN: Where do you see the gaps for women of color and South and East Asian women specifically when it comes to mental health, and in addition to your service and your work, what more would you like to see happen?
ND: There’s a lot of work to be done in terms of stigma in seeking out therapy. We are seeing a lot of relationship challenges and a lot of individuals seeking out couples therapy. And that is something that is really, really big. We are, especially South Asian communities, very influenced by others. What are people going to think? What are people going to say? The more vulnerable that we can be, the more we can help break stigma and help create awareness for therapy and how we can help you in your overall wellness.
NJSN: What more would you like to see done on a state level in terms of not only mental health, but also physical health and overall well-being not for just women of color, but people of color throughout the state?
ND: When I moved to New Jersey, I did see there were community programs doing health fairs and health screenings that included physical and mental health screenings — community centers that were offering this and then [it] kind of died down. I’m hoping that we can create more centers, whether it’s community organizations or creating new organizations that are offering more accessible health care services and screenings for individuals.
