Virtual Community Forum

Wendy Amozurrutia-Salazar, MA LPCS
Practice Manager for Adult Behavioral Health and Child and Family Services
Integral Care

Wendy Amozurrutia-Salazar has been working in the field of Integrated Behavioral Health for over 11 years. At Integral Care, she serves as a Practice Manager for both Adult Behavioral Health and Child and Family Services. As a practice manager, Wendy provides Integrated Behavioral Health program development and consultation, clinical supervision and oversight for doctoral psychology interns and externs in partnership with the University of Texas-Austin, and clinical consultation and client care with Texas Children’s Access Through Telehealth (TCHATT) – a partnership with Dell Children’s Medical Center.

Wendy is currently completing a Doctorate in Integrated Behavioral Health. Prior to her work with Integral Care, Wendy worked as a Program Director for a 16 bed facility for displaced youth and provided trauma services for women and children since 1998. Special interests and areas of specialty include integrated behavioral health, women and children’s mental health issues, depression, and trauma.

Martha Lujan, CHW-MHPSS
Community Health Worker- Mental Health Peer Support Specialist
The University of Texas at Austin

Martha works with the UT School of Nursing Social Resource Center in Del Valle, Texas as a Community Health Worker, and as a State-certified Mental Health Peer Support Specialist. She is part of the Central Health Champions 2022 Cohort.

Martha has been a volunteer speaker and facilitator with Bridges to Life Prison Ministry for 15 years. Martha found her healing at Safe Place as part of the pilot program in Peer Support groups in English and Spanish. She later returned to her community at Safe Alliance as a staff Survivor Peer Support Specialist.

Martha is passionate about community advocacy, and is known to unapologetically use her voice to empower every individual she crosses paths with. Martha believes that all organizations, agencies, and non-profits must add to the policies and procedures Trauma Informed Care training when working directly with clients. This training must be led by persons with lived experience who are willing and have the capacity to genuinely and transparently share their life’s experiences to change behaviors and stigmas.

She was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, but she been calling Austin home for 19 years. She is a proud mother and grandmother.

Luis H. Zayas
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at Austin

LUIS H. ZAYAS, Ph.D., is a Professor and the Sutherland Chair in Mental Health and Social Policy at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, and Professor of Psychiatry at the Dell Medical School of The University of Texas at Austin. Zayas is both a social worker and developmental psychologist. His clinical work and research have focused on disadvantaged families, particularly Hispanic and other ethnic/racial minorities, and immigrant and refugee children and parents. His work has been published in leading scientific journals and quoted in Spanish- and English-language media including radio, television, and print publications. Zayas has lectured nationally and internationally on the topic of his research and clinical work. He is the author of Latinas Attempting Suicide: When Cultures, Families, and Daughters Collide (Oxford, 2011), a book that explores and analyzes the documented, decades-long data on Hispanic girls attempting suicide. Drawing on cultural psychology, adolescent development, and family functioning, Zayas provides rich details on why some Latinas attempt suicide and others do not despite many similarities. Zayas is also the author of Forgotten Citizens: Deportation, Children, and the Making of American Exiles and Orphans (Oxford, 2015) on the mental health of U.S. citizen-children whose parents are deported to Latin America and refugee children and mothers from Central America who are held in U.S. detention centers. Forgotten Citizens was a finalist for the 2016 Hamilton Book Award and the 2016 Book Award Honorable Mention from the Society for Social Work and Research. His forthcoming book on the detention and separation of immigrant children, titled Through Iceboxes and Kennels: How Immigration Detention Harms Children and Families, is due out early next year.

Dulce Gruwell
NAMI Central Texas Mental Health Peer Support Specialist and Peer Support Program Manager
Dulce Gruwell manages the development, delivery, expansion, and implementation of programs for people with mental health conditions. Prior to NAMI Central Texas, Dulce established the NAMI San Diego Individualized Employment Support Program; for people suffering from homelessness, mental illness, and substance use disorders. Dulce Gruwell has a Bachelor of Science and is a Recovery Support Specialist (an individual living successfully in recovery, with extensive training).