Faculty Profile Yvette Caro

Building Better Lives for Clients and Psychology Careers for Students

For children and families who’ve escaped brutal regimes, the horrors don’t always end with their arrival in America. “We’ve treated torture victims as well as minors who were traumatized in their native lands and abused during the trip to join their parents here,” said Yvette Caro, director of the Queens College Psychological Center (QCPC). “Some face poverty; new, complicated family relationships; the asylum process and, recently, the fear of deportation.”

Serving refugees is an especially strong focus thanks to Youth in Transition, a collaborative program begun in 2016 with Psychology Professor Valentino Nikulina. Created specifically for immigrant youth and their families, the program offers free services in English and Spanish.

QCPC helps not only immigrants but others struggling to cope with problems. Established in 2010 with Caro as its founding director, this community mental health clinic and education center is committed to serving economically disadvantaged children, teens, adults and older adults. The cost ranges from free to a sliding fee scale.

“Everyone can improve the quality of their life,” said Caro. Help includes individual counseling, family and couples therapy, grief management, parental skills training, improving children’s behavioral problems and many other services.

“We want to reach people who wouldn’t necessarily reach out to us,” she said, explaining that in some communities, there’s a stigma to receiving psychological help. “And some people  know they need help but assume they can’t afford it. Other potential clients don’t have internet access to find us.” And so center personnel go into the community, posting informative flyers in laundromats and supermarkets.

Caro’s personal and professional background make her the ideal director. Her family emigrated to New York City from Puerto Rico in the 1940s and she grew up speaking only Spanish at home. “I’ve always been interested in the experience of adaptation,” she noted. For nearly 20 years, Caro worked at Bellevue Hospital Center, serving for more than a decade as director of the Bilingual Treatment program, a mental health clinic established to improve care for the Hispanic community. In 2005 Caro expanded, founding the Center for the Asian Family.

Her passionate commitment to social justice means that QCPC has traveled off campus, sharing knowledge with schools and community organizations such as the New Americans Welcome Center at the Flushing YMCA, Flushing International High School and Pomonok Senior Center.

The center has another crucial purpose: to provide training for students enrolled in the PhD in Clinical Psychology program at QC. At any given time, these aspiring psychologists under Caro’s supervision are assisting 75-80 clients (at least 80% live in Queens). “Working with people from all ethnic and socio-economic groups enriches their training,” she said. “It’s a privilege to look at the world through others’ eyes, and the students are grateful for the opportunity.”

Undergraduate psychology majors are also helping at the center—supervising children in the waiting area, interacting with the graduate students and creating a food pantry that students began through a highly successful campus-wide donation drive for the neediest clients. Many of these undergraduates decide to pursue advanced degrees, some the PhD.

“I love what I do,” said Caro. “I get to see people change their lives for the better. And I get to see my students grow and go into the field of clinical psychology so that they can improve lives, too.”