History
Asian Community Mental Health Services (ACMHS) was established in 1974 by community providers, activists, and progressive citizens concerned about the well-being of low-income Asian & Pacific Islander (A&PI) immigrants and refugees in need of culturally competent mental health services. Our goals are:
- To empower Asian & Pacific Islander (A&PIs) to lead healthy, productive, and self-sufficient lives;
- To promote and advocate for culturally appropriate and linguistically accessible services for mental health, developmental disabilities, and family support; and
- To advance human achievement through advocacy, empowerment, and coalition building.
To date, we have nearly 100 multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-disciplinary full and part-time staff members including paraprofessionals, marriage family therapists, licensed clinical social workers, clinical psychologists, and psychiatrists. The core competencies of our staff reflect a wide spectrum of age groups, immigrant/refugee cultural status and language fluency in 13 A&PI languages/dialects: Cambodian, Cantonese, Japanese, Khmuu, Korean, Lao, Mandarin, Malay, Mien, Tagalog, Thai, Toishan, and Vietnamese.
Each year, ACMHS serves over 3,000 A&PI clients from Alameda and Contra Costa counties. ACMHS receives its funds from government, foundations, and individual donors; in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2004, ACMHS budget was $5.1 million. ACMHS maintains headquarters in Oakland's Chinatown (Alameda County) and a satellite office in Richmond (Contra Costa County).