Growing up in Canada, at times, felt like growing up between two worlds, according to Stacy Darku.
“I’m from New Brunswick originally; my family, however, is from Ghana, West Africa,” recalls Darku – a registered counselling therapist working out of Halifax NS. “They immigrated to New Brunswick, and then I was born. My siblings are from Ghana, I’m the only one born here.
“Coming from a Ghanaian culture and living at home, we speak the language, we eat the food, the culture is within our home. But then the moment you walk outside of the home, you have to shift into the Canadian culture.”
Darku explains that navigating between her two home cultures could be difficult, sometimes even stressful and anxiety-inducing.
“It’s like, okay, how do I behave,” says Darku. “Do I behave like my friends this way? Do I behave like my family that way? There’s lots of shame and guilt and embarrassment and lots of mixed up feelings trying to navigate two worlds.”
These formative years helped inspire Darku to pursue a career in counselling, and they were very influential to her decision to open Esinam Counselling Incorporated, a firm dedicated to making sure clients saw a bit of themselves in their counsellor.
“While I was working at different clinics, I decided I’m going to do a micro-practice working one day a week,” says Darku. “I was immediately full the first week I got clients. And then I just got more and more and more.
“What I was hearing from the community was, ‘we needed this. We needed a place that felt safe and comfortable.’ Let me try and create it for the community.”
That was 2021. Today, she has two offices in HRM; one in Lower Sackville, and one that recently opened in Dartmouth. Besides Darku herself, Esinam Counselling has six other counsellors, all from distinct cultural backgrounds.
“We’re fully multicultural here, and I really pride myself of that,” Darku beams. “I recall even having a majority of Caucasian people at school around me. I wished I could talk to someone that looked like me, or could understand my struggles. It was really hard to share your feelings, because no one understood.”
Chances are good that immigrants seeking mental health care are going to encounter a caucasian therapist, if they even feel comfortable seeking out therapy at all. Cultural biases and language barriers can be obstacles for non-native Nova Scotians seeking support. Esinam Counselling wants to have as diverse a staff as possible, so that no one has to worry about cultural differences impeding their healing journey.
“Any person with different walks of life can go to see a therapist, and they don’t have to explain themselves,” says Darku. “They can just work on the root cause. They can work on their traumas. They can work on shifting their narratives of their stories to help with healing, rather than sitting and trying to educate the the therapist.”
“In my experience, clients are more likely to feel validated and supported when their cultural identity is acknowledged and respected within the therapeutic process,” says Zarrin Ghaferi, the first counsellor to join Esinam Counselling, who moved to Canada from Iran in Jr. High. “Having a shared cultural background with a client can improve their standard of care by fostering a deeper understanding and trust, by reducing cultural misunderstandings.
“Understanding cultural contexts can also allow counsellors to design treatment plans or recommend interventions that are more relevant and respectful of the client’s cultural values and practices. If they’re struggling with their racial identity, or have experienced racial injustice, or who have, like myself, migrated to a new country like Canada and might be experiencing stress, anxiety, depression due to migration and settlement, Esinam Counselling is a place where one can seek out to get support in those areas.
“Halifax is becoming a multicultural city,” Ghaferi adds. “It would be really nice for us to be able to support more individuals from different cultural backgrounds; that means having more culturally diverse therapists on the team.”
Darku says there’s still work to do, both within her own practice, and across Nova Scotia, to draw more people from different backgrounds into the mental health care field.
“Our practice is creating a space where you have a lot of options to work with a therapist that fits your needs, compared to a space where all the therapists look alike,” says Darku. “Ideally, that’s what I would love to have, a is a clinic where you have lots of options, lots of language options as well. But I also hope that other clinics can mimic that, and have space for different clientele.”
