The Espoir Trauma Clinic is a virtual multiservice mental and emotional wellness center dedicated to providing specialized services to trauma survivors and high-performers and conducting professional education and training programs for mental health professionals and corporate leaders in the Caribbean

The ESPOIR Way

a breakthrough to badassery

The Espoir Treatment Protocol is a synthesis of the latest methodologies available for treating trauma. New research on trauma and the brain guides our treatment protocol, and the combination is highly effective in restoring nervous system regulation.

We use body-based trauma healing practices blended with behavioral therapy and belief shifting techniques to help you find relief from psychological trauma, stress and breakdown, reclaim your personal power and create a life that is unrecognizable from your past

Why Trauma?

"Trauma is not a flaw or weakness. It is a highly effective tool of safety and survival. Trauma is also not an event. Trauma is the body's protective response to an event-or series of events-that it perceives as potentially dangerous. This perception may be accurate, inaccurate, or entirely imaginary. In the aftermath of highly stressful or traumatic situations our ventral vagal nerve and downstairs brain may embed a reflexive trauma response in our bodies. This happens at lighting speed... This trauma then gets stuck in the body-and stays stuck there until it is addressed."

-Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands

The Caribbean Lived Experience

Trauma is not what happened to you, it’s how your nervous system learnt to adapt in order to survive what you went through.

When you understand trauma from this perspective, it is clear that the Caribbean region is uniquely juxtaposed as both a traumatized and traumatizing society.

The Caribbean lived experience is one characterized by adversity and deprivation. Most people experience at least three Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) which are known to lead to long-term mental and physical health complications.

Research shows that more than 60% of Caribbean families are single-parent households headed by women. This creates two problems: first the rupture in family structure created by the absent father which often results in abandonment, neglect and rejection wounds in children. And second is the experience of poverty and economic insecurity that depletes a nervous system and creates complex developmental trauma due to the lack of access to adequate resources

There is also a high incidence of intergenerational trauma which is the inherent legacy of slavery in the region, plus the trauma inflicted by the marginalization and systemic oppression of being classified as “third world” and the universal lack of access to basic resources such as clean water, sufficient nutritious food and safe shelter.

This means that Caribbean people live in a constant state of survival and this is exacerbated by high crime rates, unemployment and other problems created by poverty and lack of access to financial and material resources.

The psycho-social reality of the Caribbean region is that every Caribbean citizen IS living with trauma. And that trauma affects individuals, families, teams, organizations and society as a whole. 

Trauma is at the root of many of the problems we see in our Caribbean society—including mental illness. However, the Caribbean mental health care system is not currently built to deal with trauma. Current and traditional models of mental health care do not consider the impact of trauma and instead take an approach to care that dehumanizes people and causes further harm 

In addition, current mental and alternative healthcare systems are developed and tailored for a social reality that does not reflect the Caribbean lived experience and do not offer a culturally responsive approach that can adequately address the unique problems we face as a collective.

The Espoir Trauma Clinic exists to change that. At ESPOIR, we understand the adverse impact of trauma across generations as well as the power of trauma healing in transforming the lived experience and social reality we are exposed to.

Our goal is to create a culture of trauma-informed care that de-pathologizes trauma and de-shames mental illness across the Caribbean so that people have the space they need to heal and truly flourish