Mental Health Center Revamped in Woodside

By Iryna Shkurhan ishkurhan@queensledger.com

The Child Center of NY in Woodside was renamed the Cohen Family Wellness Center after a philanthropic couple donated five million dollars to fund holistic mental health services for youth.

As a family-focused nonprofit, the center serves approximately 700 families in Queens every year through a range of programs that target a spectrum of mental health needs present in youth from birth to 24 years of age. Their cultural competency is reflected in clinicians that speak almost a dozen different languages to adequately serve all communities in Queens.

“The Cohen Family Wellness Center is a place that promotes hope, growth, and empowerment for its residents—and our city’s children need a place exactly like it right now,” said Traci Donnelly, CEO of the Child Center, in a statement. “The pandemic only exacer- bated the struggles of young New Yorkers dealing with the most severe mental health challenges, and the Center is designed to fill that need.”

The Child Center of New York was founded in 1953 as a mental health counseling center in Queens. Today, it serves nearly 43,000 children and their families across the city and on Long Island. The Woodside location is one of the center’s 70 community and school sites that provide services ranging from early childhood education, an intensive outpatient program and substance abuse treatment.

“The uniqueness about the center is that we have all these programs in one location,” said Abraham Santana, a therapist at Woodside location who previously worked as a school social worker prior to 2020. “I believe the most impact I’ve made was more with individual work with the families.”

One of the center’s success stories is Jonathan Molina, a 17-yearold and life-long Woodside resident who began treatment at the center in 2020 following a psychiatric hospitalization. He experienced anxiety that manifested in overly frequent trips to the bathroom that he says began to affect his quality of life.

“I thought therapy was for people who are severe, and they needed it. But I came to realize that therapy is for people who just need a support system,” said Molina in a zoom interview with the Queens Ledger.

Santana, Jonathan’s therapist for the past two years, recounted his experience with working with Molina to reframe anxious thoughts, develop coping strategies and ultimately reduce his anxietyinduced trips to the restroom. They went from meeting twice a week, to only once a month as Molina’s symptoms improved from receiving talk therapy and medication.

“Whenever these big changes happen, I kind of tend to fall back to my original self ,just like freaking out or having second doubts about everything,” said Molina. “But I’ve always managed to come back. So each time it happens, I come back stronger, in a way because I’m more prepared and prepared to tackle these issues. So I feel like the hardest parts are just going away.”

Santana has a caseload of young clients that are working through symptoms of PTSD, ADHD, anxiety and depression.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, he also has a slew of clients that are experiencing bereavement following the loss of a family member.