Today we’d like to introduce you to Muna Mohamed.
Hi Muna, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My name is Muna Mohamed. I am a Somali/American and a Clinical Counselor. I came to the United States at the age of 15. Prior to that I lived in Syria for 13 years and it is where we fled to after the civil war in Somalia. Coming to the United States as a teenager with limited to none language experience was not easy. I went through the adjustment period and the stress that comes with that and had to learn a whole new culture and language.
I definitely feel fortunate to be in the United States in a safer space and to be able to explore different opportunities to reach my highest potential.
Being visibly different comes with its own challenges, I have experienced racism and discrimination back in Syria and here. These experiences have shaped me and helped me build resiliency. These experiences were also my main drive to creating therapeutic services that speak to people with stigmatized identities.
I started Behavioral Health Alliance in 2019. It’s a private practice that aims at providing quality psychotherapy services for our communities. I am particularly passionate about serving the marginalized and underserved communities that don’t have adequate access to services and equitable opportunities to quality health care. I initially majored in psychology for my undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota. Declaring my major was not an easy path. I knew I wanted to be in the mental health field since my senior year of high school. I noticed the silence that surrounds anything mental health related in the communities I am a part of (Somali, immigrant, and black communities). I wanted to be a changing agent and help dismantle the stigma that mental health comes with.
When I initially informed my parents about my decision in majoring in psychology for my BA, they were not too thrilled. It was a very foreign concept to them and they had nothing but stigmas and rigid perspectives of who seeks mental health support and reasons for why I should not be in this field. Like many in my Somali community, my parents at the time believed that you can either be ‘sane’ or ‘insane’ and they would describe images they have seen back home of individuals who were experiencing active psychosis and running in the neighborhood naked. They had very limited and stigmatized understanding.
I ended up exploring other majors to make them happy. It was not until my junior year of college and after feeling unhappy that I decided to declare psychology as a major. My parents were ok with it at that point because they saw that I was not satisfied with the path they envisioned for me, like many other immigrant parents they initially wanted me to be a doctor or something in the medical field. But they are very supportive of me right now.
After I earned my BA in psychology from the University of Minnesota, I got my master’s in Counseling Psychology in 2015 from the University of St. Mary’s. I initially started my private practice with only me then when the pandemic started I turned it into a group practice due to the heightened need. In addition to the pandemic, there were a lot of people coming to us to seek services due to racial trauma during the uprising after the murder of George Floyd.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Being a business owner comes with its own set of challenges, business is unpredictable and you always have to be ready and prepared.
As a clinician, we do not get trained on how to run a business so it was definitely a big learning curve for me. I so far survived 3 years of being a business owner and hope to continue.
One of my biggest challenges was also dealing with imposter syndrome due to lack of representations of people who look like me. I am extremely fortunate to have people in my life who believe in me and were my cheerleaders as I embarked on my private practice journey. My husband was one of my biggest supporters when I started my practice along with my family.
Another challenge was dealing with insurance, as a private practice, we accept insurance as a method to cover psychotherapy services. Dealing with insurance has not been easy at all. When I was first going through the contracting and credentialing phase with health plans, I experienced a lot of obstacles doing so, from long wait periods, to denials and appealing the denials, to delayed reimbursements.
When I left my full-time job and started the practice I had to get a side job to cover for business expenses because of the delays caused by insurance. I was fortunate enough to have a secondary income through my husband and was able to sustain my other needs through that income.
Learning when to put on the clinical hat vs. the business hat was a challenge as well and an ongoing learning process.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
At BHA we provide psychotherapy for individuals, couples, groups, and families. We also work with schools and provide in-school therapy. In addition, we provide workshops and healing circles.
What sets us differently as a business is the diversity of our team. our team members speak different languages and are able to provide therapeutic services in those languages. We are able to provide therapy in English, Arabic, Somali, and Hmong. Our team comes from different cultural backgrounds with various expertise to accommodate the needs of our clients. We strive to provide culturally competent and sensitive services. We also offer sliding scale fee options for individuals that don’t have insurance or can’t afford regular therapy fees.
I am very proud of my hardworking team and the continuous growth that’s allowing us to serve more people in our communities.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
If someone is interested in seeking therapeutic services for themselves or a loved one they can contact us either via phone or email. This is also applicable to any agency that wants us to run a workshop or if a school wants to work with us.
Someone can support us by sharing us as a resource and spreading awareness of our services so it can reach a wider audience.
Phone Number: 952-652-3439
Email Address: info@behavioralhealthalliance.
You can also find more about Behavioral Health Alliance on our website: https://www.
Contact Info:
- Email: mmohamed@behavioralhealthalliance.org
- Website: https://www.behavioralhealthalliance.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhatherapy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therapybymuna
