Mental health has become an important topic when discussing communities of color.
Bebe Moore Campbell, founder of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Urban Los Angeles chapter, said in 2005, “Once my loved ones accepted [my] diagnosis, healing began for the entire family, but it took too long. It took years. Can’t we, as a nation, begin to speed up that process? We need a national campaign to destigmatize mental illness, especially one targeted toward African Americans… It’s not shameful to have a mental illness. Get treatment. Recovery is possible.”
Campbell is considered to be a pioneer in mental health awareness in communities of color. She was a leading Black author, she co-founded NAMI Urban Los Angeles and received NAMI’s 2003 Outstanding Media Award for Literature. She died in 2006 and in 2008, the United States House of Representatives announced July as Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month.
Latinos face unique challenges when dealing with their mental health. There are cultural barriers, lack of education, and many other things that stand between people getting the help they need.
“It is important to appreciate these differences and understand how community members self-identify based on race, ethnicity, and/or national origin,” NAMI states on their website.
35.1% of Hispanic/Latinx adults with mental illness receive treatment each year compared to the U.S. average of 46.2%. This is due to many unique barriers to care.
Language barriers are often an obstacle in the Latino community when searching for mental health resources. Talking about feelings and emotions is already difficult enough without the burden of not understanding the language.
17.0% of Hispanic/Latinx people in the U.S. live in poverty (compared to 8.2% of non-Hispanic whites). Individuals who live in poverty have a higher risk of mental illness and, conversely, individuals with mental illness have a higher risk of living in poverty.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2019, 20.0% of nonelderly Hispanic people had no form of health insurance. In addition to facing an already limited number of providers due to language barriers, people identifying Latino/Hispanic have even fewer options when they are uninsured.
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