Mental health in the Latino community
The Latino community is full of pride and culture with the many things that we do. We throw big parties for any small occasion and take pride in anything our family members do that’s slightly positive. But are we too proud? Latinos are often too proud to talk about mental health because they’re afraid of what their peers will think of them.
But the issue isn’t just that they’re haughty. It’s often that they consider mental illness as not being real. Most times Latinos see people with a mental illness as attention seeking individuals. They often throw them to the side and ignore them. The people that do have mental illnesses are scared of talking about it to their family because they think they’ll get laughed at or get called locos (crazy).
On average only 20% of Latinos with symptoms of psychological disorders seek help and of that 20% only 10% actually talk to professionals. Another problem with the Latino community is how private we are about the negative things in our lives.Most Latinos know the saying “la ropa sucia se lava en su casa” which when translated means don’t air out your dirty clothes. This basically means don’t tell other people of your issues. We think that if we talk about our issues to a professional or anyone in our family that it will be an invasion of our privacy.
The issue that should be looked at more is the fact that we ignore people that are dealing with mental health issues and treat them badly until something serious happens. I dealt with anger issues most of my life and I thought I was the only one in the family that dealt with a mental health issues until my cousin had an episode. He attacked me, my mom, and his parents because he had a panic attack which amplified because of the anger issues and anxiety that he had. He was always treated as if he was crazy or as if he was just looking for attention and it wasn’t until he had an episode that his parents and siblings actually acknowledged that he had a real problem. They then realized that it should have been dealt with when he started to tell them about it or when he showed symptoms. However, that’s another problem; they didn’t know what the symptoms were.
The Latino community is generally misinformed on what it means to have a mental illness or how to recognize one. Most times Latinos with mental disorders don’t know that they have them because they are unaware of which symptoms classify them as having a mental illness. They also fail to seek medical help and will often self diagnose, leading them to resort to treatments for disorders they don’t have.
Overall the Latino community is a great community. I just think we should work on our communication skills regarding mental health. It is important that we all try to help each other out and try to gain a better understanding of what it means to have a mental illness. After all we aren’t just a community — “somos familia”.
