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What do Hispanics fear more than a friend arriving on time (or even worse, EARLY) to the party they are hosting? The answer: talking about mental illnesses! As much as Hispanics turn a blind eye to being “on time”, they close both eyes to any sort of conversation about mental illnesses or therapy. And trust me, it’s not because Hispanics are somehow immune to mental health illnesses. It’s largely due to the fact that, culturally, Hispanics tend to prioritize personal resilience over vulnerability; which puts them in a position where “asking for help” is the last option.

Growing up in a Mexican household, this was very much the case. Any time anyone wasn’t feeling mentally well, the answer was something like “eat some pozole, you’ll feel better”. For more extreme displays of mental issues, one was called ‘loco’ and silently dismissed. These examples are becoming more and more problematic as the rate of mental illnesses becomes pervasive across all ethnic groups.

In the United States alone, more than 16% of the Latinx community struggles with a mental health condition. This is nearly 10 million people. This is roughly the population of a country like Greece or Sweden. Imagine if everyone in Greece had a mental health illness and no one sought help or at the very least, therapy!? Those picturesque, well-visited islands, like Santorini, would cease to exist. And while mental health doesn’t discriminate against any one community, it does affect non-White populations at prolonged rates.

Stigma plays an antagonist role here and starts the domino effect: stigma can mean it’s taboo to talk about, read about, or even think about how you might be struggling with depression, anxiety, anger issues, or even an eating disorder. Then, this stigma can further lead to lack of information easily and readily available.

Read more at Forbes.com.

Psychologists use the term trauma to describe an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Racial trauma, or race-based traumatic stress, refers to the specific mental and emotional harms linked to racism and discrimination. The high rate of people who experience racism, and subsequent racial trauma, highlights the need to address the heinous nature of systemic racism in the US. Race-based trauma is serious and can lead to severe effects, psychologically and medically.

Race-based trauma (or race-based traumatic stress) refers to the emotional and mental injuries that result from continued exposure to racism, ethnic discrimination, racial bias, and hate crimes. In the United States, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities tend to be most vulnerable to racial trauma because of the culture and history of racism in the country, but it’s worth noting that any individual who suffers emotionally because of a racist encounter can experience racial trauma. Racial trauma can happen on a micro or macro scale. Macroaggressions that can cause racial trauma include society-level events or policies that discriminate against Black people, such as examples of police brutality, like the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

The effects of racial trauma on health and well-being are complex and well documented and can be severe.

For marginalized groups, like Black people and other BIPOC communities, continuous discrimination and racism become a form of chronic stress. Research shows this, as well as that the health consequences of racism and discrimination can be passed down from one generation to the next.

Data from the Jackson Heart Study (an ongoing study that started in 2000, following more than 5,000 African Americans to better understand disparities in cardiovascular disease) has revealed that higher levels of perceived discrimination among African Americans in the US are linked with poorer health behaviors, such as sleeping less and smoking, as well as worse health outcomes, such as higher incidence of obesity.

Part of what makes racial trauma so insidious is that many of the symptoms stem from the fear that similar traumas will happen again. There’s a fear of not just how a person of color may be treated or of an isolated event, but that their safety is at stake and that this can happen again. When you’re mentally and emotionally always on guard like that, it creates a physiological stress response — it produces cortisol, she explains. That’s normal and healthy if it happens on occasion in response to a stressor you need to deal with. But if it’s happening all the time it can cause all sorts of damage to the body and contribute to anxiety, heart disease, depression, and psychological or cognitive impairment.

Read more at Forbes.com.

Feeling lonely is a common part of the human experience but that doesn’t make loneliness easier to handle. Starting with Thanksgiving and ending with the grand finale — New Year’s Eve — the focus of the next few weeks is on celebrating with family, coworkers, neighbors, and friends.

While many people embrace this time of year and feel joyous, for others, it’s a difficult season. If you live with mental illness, the extra stress and anxiety of the season can trigger symptoms. In 2014 the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reported that 64% of people with mental illness said the holidays worsen their symptoms.

Reasons for loneliness can vary widely. If you’re grieving the loss of a loved one — and everywhere you look you are painful reminders of your loss — the holidays can amplify your grief. It’s also possible to be to feel lonely while in the company of others. So, it’s not just being physically alone.

“There is a cultural expectation, which is many times reinforced by Hollywood’s movies and other media outlets, that the holidays are a time when families and friends gather to enjoy time together, reconnect, enjoy old memories, and make new memories,“ explains clinical psychologist Samia Estrada.

Receiving greeting cards with photos of happy families together and looking at social media posts of “Friendsgiving” festivities when you are not included can trigger feelings of loneliness as well as depression and anxiety. Jessica Miller, a licensed mental health counselor, explains, “Many people do not feel loved or supported in general. They may have unreasonable expectations. This is true all year but is most noticeable during the holidays.”

Read more at PsyCom.net.

When Mariana Pimentel thinks about her childhood in a small town in Mexico, she remembers being surrounded by anger and desperation. Her parents worked long hours to support Pimentel and her brothers and sisters, so they were often absent. When they were home, her parents communicated by yelling.

“I want my kids to grow up in a different environment from how I grew up and not repeat the same mistakes,” said Pimentel, a 41-year-old mother of three.

Shifting away from the parenting style she grew up with took time and lots of work. Nine years ago, Pimentel, who lives in Salinas, began attending free classes on topics such as positive parenting and discipline at GoKids Inc., a nonprofit that provides early childhood education to lower-income families.

“I’ve noticed that if I am stressed or anxious, I will end up transmitting that to my kids. There is a connection,” Pimentel said. “The more I attend classes, the more I learn, the better I can help my children and the better off they will be.”

During the first year of the pandemic, nearly two-thirds of caregivers, including parents, reported adverse mental or behavioral health symptoms, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey. The survey also found that 27% of parents of children under 18 reported that their mental health worsened during the pandemic.

The need to come to terms with how parental mental health influences the mental health of children has come into sharper focus as the United States grapples with a crisis of children experiencing higher rates of anxiety, depression, and thoughts of suicide.

Children of color suffer the most, say experts, because services remain inaccessible to them for a variety of reasons.

Read more at KQED.org.

When San Francisco commissioned a study in 1971 about the mental health of local children, it found that only one Chinese American kid in the city was receiving mental health treatment.

“There weren’t linguistically and culturally appropriate services,” retired mental health social worker Nancy Lim-Yee explained.

And as a result, she said, the vast majority of Chinese American children simply weren’t seeking the help they needed. A year after that 1971 study, the Chinatown Child Development Center (CCDC) was established under federal funding and later became a program of the city’s Department of Public Health. Now, some 50 years after its founding, the organization is still fighting some of the same stigma that prevents Asian American families from getting their children psychiatric and psychological services.

Lim-Yee, 70—who worked at CCDC as the director until her retirement in 2014—told The Standard that because of the negative connotations in Chinese language to describe mental health, some Chinese American families hesitate to sign up for therapy and opt to hide the issues. For Chinese immigrant kids, experts say the need for mental health services should be more urgent, given the additional pressures they might face in the United States.

For 50 years, the Chinatown center has been trying to eliminate that stigma against therapy—especially among immigrant parents of struggling kids.

Read more at SFStandard.com.

The suicide rate in the United States has been rising for decades, with some ethnic groups seeing astronomical jumps.

“Native communities experience higher rates of suicide compared to all other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., with suicide being the eighth leading cause of death for American Indians and Alaska Natives across all ages,” according to the National Indian Council on Aging.

In fact, suicide is the second leading cause of death for Native youth, giving them the highest suicide rate for all racial and ethnic groups. The higher rate of mental illness among Native people is linked to higher levels of domestic violence, historical disenfranchisement, lack of access to adequate healthcare, socioeconomic disadvantages, alcohol and drug abuse at younger ages and at higher rates, and cultural disconnection, according to the National Indian Council on Aging. With so many factors contributing to the high suicide rate, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but the Helena Indian Alliance offers outreach programs to help at-risk Native youth find the support they need.

“We work for a federal grant under the HIA called Native Connections,” the program’s outreach coordinator Matt Hartnett said. “It is a federal grant based on suicide prevention for Native youth age 12 to 24. This age group has the highest rate for suicide. It doesn’t mean we’ll refuse someone else, but those adolescents and young adults are our main focus.”

This program seeks to help the young people reconnect with their ancestral roots through activities that teach them about their culture and provide them with opportunities to spend time together. One aspect of the program, Culture is Prevention, teaches about past traditions.

“We have different lessons and crafts,” Hartnett said. “They learn about beadwork and traditional games and activities. We make them proud of who they are and where they come from, which helps kids find an identity.”

Read more at KXLH.com.