Staff Spotlight: Mariam Shah—Outpatient Clinician

Outpatient Clinician Mariam Shah’s career as a chef led her to work in New York City kitchens and hosting restaurant pop ups across the east coast. Cooking came naturally to her and jobs were coming in—then the pandemic hit. Eating at restaurants and socializing in public ground to a near halt, and her business as a chef slowed down too.

Mariam decided that she needed to make a career change. “I needed a career that wouldn’t go out of fashion,” says Mariam. “I’d always been interested in psychology, but when I realized that was going to take forever, my therapist said, ‘do social work!’ and so I did.”

Mariam earned her Master of Social Work at University at Albany and started her clinical internship at UCS. Now, with her internship and graduate studies completed, she works with clients every day at UCS’ Ledge Hill office location in Bennington, VT. “I’ve always been good at understanding human nature and seeing patterns of behavior,” says Mariam. “These have been just my own theories, but it’s nice to see that they are based in something, because what I instinctively do with clients works, and issues exist for the reasons I always thought they would.”

Her instincts and empathy allow Mariam to help her clients on their healing journeys, but vicarious trauma, she explains, can be problematic for mental health workers. She believes that everyone providing mental health care to others should also participate in therapy, to help process emotions that naturally come up during the job. “Therapy is not just where we will process what is happening with us,” says Mariam, “but also where we learn how to be therapists, especially if we have a good therapist.” She knows it’s impossible not to feel impacted by her clients—it’s empathy that drives clinicians and other mental health workers to do what they do.

“I just don’t believe in the idea that you leave work at work,” she says.  “We’re all doing this because we’re empathetic people.”

Mariam speaks four languages and offers help to clients coming into UCS who speak Urdu, Hindi or Punjabi. Seeking help is not easy, especially if your language is not spoken where you seek help. Mariam makes clients feel welcome and heard in their most challenging times.

Her hope for the future of mental health care is for more people of color to enter the field. “It took me five years to find my own therapist who is a person of color, and I share a culture with them.” says Mariam. “We have so many clients in the community who are from Afghanistan, and we have no way to help them because we don’t share language or culture, and I think that people who speak multiple languages, or who are people of color, should definitely consider helping other people of color. They’re needed.”