Navigating the Complexities of Informed Mental Healthcare Across Contexts with Fareeda Akewusola

Hi y’all! My name is Fareeda Akewusola, and I am a senior Neuroscience major from Houston, Texas, with double minors in Medical Anthropology and Entrepreneurship. This semester, I have had the incredibly enriching experience of working as a Clinical Psychology Intern with the AHB Center for Behavioral Health and Wellness in Durham.

My interest in mental health has always lived at the intersection of science and lived experience. Growing up in Nigeria, I witnessed firsthand how a lack of access to healthcare – both mental and physical – devastated families time and time again. The silence surrounding mental health revealed to me how deeply culture shapes perception, and how invisibility can perpetuate suffering. Years later, when I moved back to Houston, encountering a markedly different openness toward mental health in the United States sharpened my interest in clinical psychology and the ways care, as a whole, is understood across contexts.

This perspective has guided much of my research and community-based work. During the summer after my freshman year, I interned with Tawakalitu Raji, APRN, PMHNP, a psychiatric nurse practitioner whose practice serves both children and adults across a wide range of mental health conditions. In this role, I observed individual and group therapy sessions, scribed clinical encounters, and engaged in discussions surrounding treatment planning – not only from my familiar, empirical standpoint, but also through more holistic, patient-centered considerations I developed on-site. Working directly with patients in that context taught me the importance of evidence-based therapy and structure in fostering lasting behavioral stability and improved outcomes. At the same time, I became increasingly curious about how even the most structured approaches to care must remain responsive to the cultural and situational contexts in which they are delivered.

That curiosity deepened last summer when I interned with AMIGA, a non-profit organization in Czechia focused on facilitating adaptation and assimilation for migrants. As a co-lead for a psychosocial group for Ukrainian refugee teens, I worked closely with the group clinical psychologist on sessions focused on supporting youth navigating displacement and the highly interlinked trauma. Through this experience, I gained exposure to trauma-informed therapeutic practices and their complexity in real-world settings. More importantly, I witnessed the restorative potential of dialogue-based care in a cultural context vastly different from anything I had previously encountered.

This trajectory ultimately led me to my work at AHB Center for Behavioral Health and Wellness, a practice led by April Harris-Britt, PhD, a clinical psychologist whose work centers on family dynamics. Much of AHB Center’s current work operates within a forensic context, including mental health consultations, parent competency evaluations, and child custody cases. At AHB, I have been able to see how clinical psychology specifically operates in the niche of family and child-rearing. The practice’s work has exposed me to a different realm of psychology that has highlighted the complexity of addressing mental health within high-stakes and sometimes highly volatile environments.

Through my time at AHB, I have supported case work in a variety of capacities, including conducting research, developing health and wellness presentations on topics such as substance use and coping in attorneys, holistic healing for minority women, and the role of privilege in family law, as well as reviewing documentation, scoring psychological assessments, participating in case discussions, and conducting informal clinical intake interviews. My work has required a great deal of analytical thinking as I expected. However, it has also challenged me to utilize more human-centered thinking.

Every client has been vastly different, with their own individual story – some tragic, some completely “normal,” some frankly disturbing, and some deeply inspiring. I have had to step out of my traditional STEM-heavy, ordered methodology into a space where the very definition of “normal” is inexact: where everyone needs something different, even with the same diagnosis; where two people’s ADHD can present in entirely different ways; where one person’s dysfunction is another’s baseline. It has been fascinating, poignant, and incredibly informative all the same to have worked at AHB over the course this semester.

One of my most meaningful lessons as a Gil Intern has been the reinforcement that clinical work extends far beyond the office. It involves navigating the law, managing uncertain insurance systems and greater financial considerations, and continuously adapting care to meet individuals where they are. My experiences across research, community work, and clinical practice have collectively deepened my passion for people-centered work. Following graduation, I hope to pursue a career in psychiatry as I continue to advocate for more accessible and culturally responsive care both locally and globally.

I am endlessly grateful for the mentorship and guidance I have received at AHB Center for Behavioral Health and Wellness with Dr Harris-Britt and Ashley Robinson as well as for the continued support of Dr. Steven Buzinski and Richie Gray through the Karen M. Gil Internship program. I hope to continue my work in promoting both physical and mental health across my communities, with an emphasis on informed, individualized care.