Latina mental health fighting back with community

By Jasmin Romero

Growing up as a first-generation Latina wasn’t easy for Evelyn Ramirez.

By age 12, she already knew how to file taxes. Her parents, always working, expected her to be a second mother to her younger sibling, complete a long list of household chores, do well in school and be a role model for her family.

“At that point I knew a part of my childhood was gone. I had to grow up and mature so much faster than other kids my age,” said Ramirez.

Now 22 and attending University of California, Irvine, Ramirez realizes these pressures contributed to her struggles with chronic depression, something she hasn’t discussed much with her parents.

A sense of overwhelming pressure from home is a common theme among first-generation Latinas, and many don’t reach out for help.

Ramirez reiterates this by explaining that there’s lack of communication in her family. She has never been able to express how she has felt to them.

The truth is, mental health and seeking out therapy is still seen as a taboo in hispanic culture, and numbers are showing how much of a concern this really is.

Hispanic females that are between the ages of 10-24 have one of the highest attempted suicide rates.

In 2017, 10.5% attempted suicide.

The pressures first-generation Latinas face don’t just disappear with time. They only get harder to navigate.

Catalina Lara, a first-generation Latina and mother of two, says talking about her childhood is still too raw.

This is the first time we’ve spoken and I can sense hesitation over the phone. I sit on her comment for a minute understanding the complexity of the situation.

I tell her I’m a first-generation Latina myself. Without question I begin to share stories of my mom. As I start to talk, I question whether my words seem foreign to her. Is there too much of a generation gap? Will she be able to relate?

Within a matter of minutes, she starts relaying similar stories of her childhood.

Lara agrees there wasn’t a lot of communication growing up.

“Honestly, there was not a lot of me talking,” Lara admitted, “As of 12-years-old I fell into the mindset that [my mom] didn’t understand. Anytime I would try to, she would not say the things I expected her to say.”

She believes her relationship with her mom was typical to that of other first-generation mothers and daughters.

“It was just a lack of understanding and on my mom’s side I don’t think it was deliberate. I think she just couldn’t put herself in my shoes. She just couldn’t,” Lara said.

She tells me how she would never ask to go out because the answer would always be no, how the expectations for her and her brother were drastically different, and how critical her mom was of Lara’s actions and appearance.

“I was talking to someone today who was telling me her mom never said “I love you” and I was just like yeah that’s not a thing. They show by what they’re providing for you, and that’s just such a cultural thing,” Lara concluded.

Despite the seriousness of her stories I can’t help but laugh at the resemblance of our childhood.

I’m quickly reminded of the “Latina Mom Memes” I see on social media a little too frequently.

The ones where the mom is calling her daughter fat, threatening to call the cops on her for coming home late, or forbidding her to go out until she cleans the entire house.

The thing is, these memes are funny. The humor comes in being able to relate to them. But do they call attention to a bigger underlying issue?

Veronica Obregon, a professor in educational psychology at California University, Los Angeles, believes they do.

“We need to identify what are our cultural values here and what is really trauma,” Obregon said. “A lot of what you see, a lot of the verbal and physical abuse is not cultural, what we’ve been doing is passing off trauma as culture.”

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As a first-generation Latina, Obregon says going off to college only made problems worse. She was expected to go back home regularly during her time as a student.

“My parents wanted to constantly be supervising me. It was a challenge growing up individually,” Obregon said, “It was a lot of pressure on me. I had these expectations from my family but also high demands at school to perform well and complete every assignment. I couldn’t do both.”

Obregon vividly remembers one night being woken up by the sound of her mother banging on her apartment door.

“I remember being really scared not knowing who it was. I asked her, ‘Why are you here? Why are you doing that?’ and her response was ‘I’m angry at you because you’re not answering your phone,’” Obregon recalled.

She believes first-generation parents don’t really understand the requirements of college. Having not attended, they don’t know what the workload is like or how rigorous their child’s schedule can be.

A study on first-generation students and their sense of belonging, mental health, and use of counseling services at universities showed that they often face additional family, cultural, social, and academic challenges being the first to pursue a 4-year degree.

“The findings indicate that first-generation students tend to have lower ratings of sense of belonging and satisfaction that non-first-generation students,” the authors write, “we found that sense of belonging is significantly related to mental health […] first-generation students have a higher frequency of reporting feeling stressed, depressed or upset.”

Many first-gen Latinas, like Ramirez, feel that going off to college will help them escape the pressures at home. But in most cases, family-related pressures follow them to campus.

“I feel guilty that I’m not home and instead focusing on academics. It makes me feel selfish for wanting that for myself,” Ramirez admitted.

Ramirez realizes the time away from home has allowed childhood memories and experiences to resurface. She says a lot of the negative emotions she felt growing up have only amplified over time.

“As a kid I kind of felt bad about being Mexican. The city I grew up in made me hide my background,” Ramirez said. “I had to suppress my own culture because I felt like I had to fit into these norms and fit in with the other students that were white. I would think to myself ‘okay, this is white Evelyn now and she has to be present for academics’”.

Ramirez learned to keep to herself in classes. She would do her work, pay attention to lectures, and then pack up and leave without speaking a word to anyone else.

She says it wasn’t until this year, while taking a Latinx/Chicanx class at UCI, that she realized many other Latin students shared the same pressures.

Being surrounded by a new community has pushed Ramirez to join groups like the Latin American student organization and SAFIRE (Students Advocating for Immigrant Rights and Equity).

Despite recent eligibility as an HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution), Ramirez feels that UCI could be doing more to help the first-generation latin community on campus, specifically when it comes to mental health.

Another HSI, University of California, Davis has set initiatives to provide more funding for latinx mental health on their campus.

According to their website, UC Davis is actively trying to respond to hispanic mental health demands by increasing counseling services in student centers and housing locations, hiring new culturally specific counselors, facilitating easier access to healthcare providers, and creating a wellness program that other UC’s can implement.

Other non-HSI universities, like University of Southern California, are aware of these mental health demands and making efforts to help the Latinx community. While resources are not yet available specifically for first-gen Latinas, there are Latinx therapists at the student health center ready to help with culturally specific needs.

LA CASA, a Chicanx and Latinx community on campus, are working to provide resources for those who need them. Currently they have been holding a Power Pan Dulce series where they bring in alumni, professors, and external resources to talk about pressing issues in the Latinx community.

Their last event specifically addressed childhood trauma.

Billy Vela, director of LA CASA, realizes a lot of the problems Latinx students are facing are coming from childhood issues that haven’t yet been resolved.

“We’re always trying to see what else we can be doing to help,” Vela said, “if something isn’t working, we try something new. We’re not there yet, but we’re really trying to bring people together.”

“It’s about feeling like you belong.  That’s it. A lot people don’t feel like they belong, they don’t find their community. Once you feel like you belong, you’re going to start to do the work, in a community,” said Vela.