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photo: peru21.pe<\/em><\/p>\n Erika S\u00e1nchez began to have suicidal thoughts when she was 13. S\u00e1nchez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago, had always been melancholy, but during puberty she became hopeless. Unbeknownst to friends and family, she cried constantly. Before long, she began to cut herself. photo: peru21.pe Erika S\u00e1nchez began to have suicidal thoughts when she was 13. S\u00e1nchez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,1009,1010,1],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[565],"class_list":["post-5084598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-ma-health","category-ri-health","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"mb":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Jermaine Smith","author_link":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/author\/jay\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"photo: peru21.pe Erika S\u00e1nchez began to have suicidal thoughts when she was 13. S\u00e1nchez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants in […]","authors":[{"term_id":565,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"news-editor","display_name":"News Editor","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"mfb_rest_fields":["title","uagb_featured_image_src","uagb_author_info","uagb_comment_info","uagb_excerpt","authors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5084598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5084598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5084598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5084598"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinonewsnetwork.com\/ctln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=5084598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhen S\u00e1nchez was hospitalized at age 15, her parents finally realized it wasn\u2019t just “normal” sadness that plagued their daughter — it was mental illness.
\n“Finally, they began to really see me,” says Sanchez, now 32 and a writer in Chicago. “And that\u2019s when we began to have more honest conversations.”
\nFor Latina adolescents coming of age, this is not uncommon. In fact, Latina teens currently have the highest rate of suicide attempts among all adolescent groups in the U.S. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s 2015 youth high-risk behavior survey released earlier this month, 15 percent of Latina adolescents in the U.S. have attempted suicide. That\u2019s compared to 9.8 percent and 10.2 percent for white and black female teens, respectively. Nearly 26 percent of Latina teens considered suicide.
\n“This is a very clear, but very overlooked trend,” says Dr. Luis Zayas, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin, who is the foremost researcher studying Latina teens and suicide rates.
\nZayas says many of the teens who suffer from depression were born in the U.S. but have immigrant parents who come from cultures where there\u2019s no awareness of or vocabulary around mental illness. Many teens begin to suffer when they reach adolescence, precisely when they\u2019re yearning for independence. Indeed, 14 to 15 is the peak age for suicide attempts among Latina girls.
\n“The want for independence rubs up against their parents, who often have more traditional values that they try to put on their children,” Zayas says.
\nAs a Latina from a working-class immigrant family, S\u00e1nchez says she often felt different from her peers growing up. But she didn\u2019t always fit in among her family either. That left her feeling isolated and misunderstood.
\nShe remembers going to the zoo in Chicago with her friends when she was 16. She thought it was a fun, harmless outing. But when she got home, her parents reacted angrily that she\u2019d been out of the house for so many hours.
\n“I didn\u2019t get that. I just wanted to be independent,” she says. “I felt like I wasn\u2019t this version of an ideal Mexican daughter that they expected.”
\nTo read the complete story:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.univision.com\/univision-news\/health\/latina-teens-have-highest-rate-of-suicide-attempts-in-the-us<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"