By Lindsay Goldwert
One in six Latina adolescents in the U.S. contemplates and in many instances, attempts suicide. This rate puts young Latinas at a significantly higher suicide risk than their white, Asian, and African-American peers, according to the National Alliance on Mental Health.
Doctors and researchers have been grappling with this troubling statistic since 1998, when the Centers for Disease Control started reporting on the mental health crisis in the Latino community.
In 2006, Dr. Rosa Gil, a former Health Policy Advisor to the Mayor and Health Administrator of New York City, first began seeking funding from city policymakers and community advocates.
“Something had to be done,” she said. “It was shocking. These are the doctors and journalists of tomorrow. And they are killing themselves.” Gil is the co-author of “The Maria Paradox,” which helps Latinas with self-esteem issues.
She then went directly to one of the most problematic areas, the Tremont section of the Bronx. By utilizing qualitative marketing research and focus groups—communicating directly with the girls and their parents—her group has made breakthroughs in treatment and has developed a better understanding of why Latina adolescents experience this higher rate of depression and suicidal thoughts.
Gil found that some answers to these troubling statistics lay in the unique experience of Latino culture. She founded Life is Precious to combat these issues. The community group has a day program with a drop-in clinic that has served Latina teens with diagnosed mood disorders in the Bronx since 2007. In January, another branch opened in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.
The program, which has been designed to fit the special needs of Latinas, expects to treat over 45 Latina adolescents this year and draw in over 150 family and community members. All of the Life is Precious staff, which includes social workers, counselors, case managers, experienced educators, creative arts therapists, and a supervising psychiatrist, have experience working with adolescents with emotional challenges.
While Latina adolescents have similar struggles to teen girls of other ethnicities with suicidal ideations, such as sexual, socio-economic, and school pressures, their experience deviates when it comes to the extraordinary pressure they are likely to feel at home.
Gil has faced some of these challenges herself. She is a Cuban refugee who has been living in New York City for over 45 years.
“I am quite familiar with the challenges of acculturation stress and adaptation to a new society,” she said. “I have witnessed the impact of [these stresses] and having to live in the two worlds that resemble many of the challenges faced by the Latina adolescents in Life is Precious.” She exudes empathy for the girls that she treats and for the complex emotional battles that they face.
An important aspect of this crisis is rooted in familism—the feeling that one’s family and its needs are most important, above all else. Latina adolescents often feel unable to talk about their feelings when they have been told not to question authority from the time they are very young.
Gil has found that when you treat the family, you help treat the daughter.
“In Latino culture, girls are raised to be shy and not to be challenging,” said Gil. “They are not supposed to express their emotions. It’s okay for the boys but not the girls.”
Often, a fractured family life further complicates matters. These adolescent girls may feel like they are being treated unfairly by their mothers, while their fathers or male parental figures are either physically or emotionally absent.
Gil has also found that these experiences resonate with adolescent girls from different Hispanic countries. Whether the troubled Latina suffering from a mood disorder is from Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, or Guatemala, her strong feelings toward her family dominates her life and thoughts. If she feels as though her behavior is causing problems at home, the pain could drive her to suicidal thoughts and ideations, said Gil.
A Latina teen’s struggle with her mother is often at the center of her anxieties. Both daughter and mother are at different stages of acculturation, which results in a constant culture clash. The daughter’s desire to break out of tradition—to date, to have a later curfew, to express her feelings—often causes painful rifts. Many suicide attempts are seen as ways to garner attention or to strike back at their mothers.
On Saturdays in the Bronx, families typically play dominos and other games. Life is Precious offers a safe haven where fathers, mothers, and daughters can become more comfortable learning to communicate their feelings and have fun in the process. Mothers can speak openly with each other at open forum salons called “Tertulias clubs.”
“Normally, these daughters would not be playing games with their fathers,” said Gil. “It gives them a chance to talk to each other and interact in a new way.”
There is also an emphasis on creative arts therapy as a means to help the girls express themselves without words. Teens use drawing, writing, and work with textiles to provoke ideas and to encourage self-esteem and thoughts of the future.
Mothers, fathers, and daughters often benefit from counseling to help them cope with the many underlying problems that make dealing with their daughter’s mental illness difficult—issues such as language barriers, poverty, poor housing situations, and lack of acculturation. Daughters can speak their minds without fear of reprisal.
Each girl in the program has a madrina y padrino mentor, a godmother and godfather, that has received training on how to spot red flags in the girl’s behavior and to help facilitate talks between mother and daughter and Life is Precious staff. Bilingual caseworkers are also invaluable since they serve as a much-needed link between the doctors that are treating the young Latina at a hospital or clinic and the Life is Precious caregivers.
