Though the United States has the largest immigrant population globally, language barriers remain a critical issue in the medical field. The language gap leads to worse clinical outcomes for this vulnerable population, particularly with behavioral health services, which immigrants and refugees often seek due to inevitable trauma and stress. However, language and cultural barriers in the mental health care field cause care and treatments to be challenging for providers, who must communicate with sensitivity, and for patients, who must understand their conditions and treatments.

This website advocates for graphics—drawing from information graphics and graphic medicine—as a practical knowledge translation (KT) tool to address these challenges. Specifically, the proposed visuals aim to bridge the gap in understanding and conveying medical language and information between providers and patients.

This study demonstrates strong evidence to support using graphics to improve mental health outcomes for people with limited English proficiency (LEP).