Belonging to the Hispanic/Latinx community my whole life, I’ve seen personally how mental health issues were running rampant amongst the ranks of my peers, not just those who were of my age but also among those who shared in my cultural and ethnic background. Now the reason I share this is because there’s another type of epidemic occurring within our lifetime and it has nothing to do with a virus. Everyday more and more of our youth are dealing with a silent burden, mental illness. I too, a kid of just twenty years of age, have struggled with depression and anxiety, and I’m not the only one. According to the Office of Minority Health, of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in 2017 the second leading cause of death among Hispanics ages 15 to 34 was suicide. 

That is a concerning amount and it can almost feel overwhelming to stand in the wake of such distressing data but there is a way to combat this, and it starts at home. If we start to take our youth seriously when they say they’re not feeling their best, or when they say that they can barely get out of bed in the morning, then we could prevent the further deterioration of someone’s mental state. This sounds like a very general statement but it’s vital, growing up Latino, I’ve seen other Latino parents disregard their children’s issues, writing them off as dramatic, or even going as far as to say that only crazy people suffer from mental illness when that could be further from the truth. If we were to normalize these conversations, and before diminishing the struggles of the newer generation simply because they’re different from that of the older we instead seek to support them in their struggle, more of our youth would find the help they need, and those statistics wouldn’t be quite so daunting. For the next post, we’ll be taking a look at a testimonial, of a Latino youth who was affected by the stigma surrounding mental health within his community.