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Dr. Calvin A. Kelly leaned back in the barber’s chair for a trim. Chatting with the other clients, thoughtfully listening to their stories, Kelly was doing more than maintaining a tidy beard. Visiting the barbershop— traditionally one of the most trusted environments for Black men —shored up his work just down the hall, where he runs the first trauma recovery center in Texas.
Kelly, a psychologist, is chief clinical officer of the Harvest Trauma Recovery Center (Harvest TRC), which opened its doors in November 2023. The clinic provides free individual and group therapy to Austin area survivors of violent crime. It also coordinates with 30 nonprofits in the same building to offer free housing, transportation, food, youth, and legal guidance.
“I have sent people here many times,” Kelly said, from the barber’s chair. Looking good, sharing experiences, even the aromatherapy of the barber’s cologne recipe are inherently healing, he said. “This is group therapy.”
The Harvest Trauma Recovery Center is the newest project at East Austin’s African American Youth Harvest Foundation, a nonprofit, wraparound service center founded and operated by philanthropist Michael Lofton. Harvest TRC’s goal, Lofton said, is to treat trauma as a public health issue. That means providing not only short-term individual treatment but addressing all the practical, familial and material needs that can prevent healing.
Without treatment, research shows, about 50 percent of violent crime survivors will suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a host of related problems. Yet the most common victims of trauma often are those least able to access treatment. In its first year, the Harvest TRC reported that approximately 87 percent of the crime survivors who met the Center’s eligibility criteria belong to communities of color. Of these eligible clients, 93 percent belong to low-income families. Nationally, only one in 10 of people who survive a violent crime get direct help from a victims’ service agency.
To treat neglected populations, Harvest TRC gives its clients personalized counseling and helps them access food, housing assistance, transportation, and even children’s toys.
The results in its first year were striking. “We contracted to care for 120 clients,” Lofton said, “and at the end of the year we had more than 800.” Of these, 502 met the treatment criteria of the National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers, on which the center is based. These criteria include having experienced violent crime within the last three years. The new trauma center has provided 15,120 clinical service hours to these clients.
The clinic has also earned new support. First launched in 2023 with a grant of $1 million each from Austin and from Travis County, Harvest TRC was awarded an $800,000 contract in September 2024 from the Travis County Hospital District, known as Central Health. These funds will go to psychology, psychiatry, counseling and case management services, a Central Health spokesman said.
Harvest TRC’s holistic model is part of a national movement that includes more than 50 clinics in 13 states for trauma survivors. The Harvest Foundation’s one-stop shop, which offers support services under one roof, is ideal for this model, said Alicia Boccellari, psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, who created this approach.
“They’re doing a wonderful job,” said Boccellari, who has worked closely with Harvest TRC. “One of the things we do is provide assertive outreach.” Often, she explained, trauma survivors are too overwhelmed or fearful to reach out to mental health providers on their own. One way to build trust with them, she said, is first to offer them what they need practically: groceries, help filing out police reports–even haircuts. In fact, Boccellari said, trauma recovery centers in other states often leave pamphlets at barber shops so barbers can share them with clients.
“Often people with PTSD are unable to leave their homes or they don’t want to talk about what happened,” she said. “The other thing is that for people in communities of color there is a great stigma about mental health treatment. People feel judged by providers.”
She added: “I believe that traditional mental health providers have brought this on themselves.”
In a speech commemorating the Harvest TRC’s first year, a single mother told the foundation’s audience that getting help for her children was the only way she could face the enormous task of healing herself. Before she left him, she said the father of her children had beaten her, burned her and thrown her from windows. She started working with the Harvest TRC to help her oldest son, she said, and soon realized she needed treatment herself. The help she received enabled her to then get this treatment. “The Harvest Trauma Recovery has been able to provide my children with clothes, food, school supplies and shoes and a better outlook on life,” she said.
Harvest TRC also has blended trauma care for the community with individual care for a bereaved husband and parent. On June 15, 2024, a mass shooting at a Juneteenth celebration in Old Settlers Park led to the death of two bystanders and 14 injuries.
Teaming up with the Life Anew nonprofit, Harvest TRC held a “healing event” to help the community members touched by the violence process the chaotic emotions that followed. One of the clients who participated was Kevin Vicknair, whose 33-year-old wife, Lyndsey Vicknair, had been killed, leaving behind their three children. Lyndsey was a member of both AYLA and the Austin Bar.
Less than five months later, Vicknair also addressed Harvest TRC’s one-year commemoration. Haltingly, tearfully, he insisted on voicing his thanks to the center for treating his family. His children, he said, were doing better than he was. “There is an extremely long way to go,” he said. “But I’d be worse off without the help of everyone… I couldn’t be more grateful. Even though I’m not where I want to be, I’m taking steps to get there.”
Each person who survives violence, CEO Lofton said, needs a thoughtful, individual path to treatment. “Trauma doesn’t heal overnight,” he said. That’s where the Black barbershops come in. Located in the Harvest Foundation building along with a food pantry and youth computer workshop, Donald Hyder’s Hair Depot is a snug, warmly-lit haven that’s open to the public.
For generations, Black men have congregated, conversed, and advised each other in barbershops, clinic director Kelly said. Now, when he has a client who needs more confidence or isn’t ready to talk, he sends them to the barbershop. With time, he said, some will take that next step down the hall to the clinic.
