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Hugo Balta<\/a>, Publisher of Illinois Latino News (ILLN) and moderator for LT, led a panel discussion on the stigma associated with mental illness within the Hispanic-Latino culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hispanic-Latino adolescents\u2019 mental health and academic performance declined during the COVID-19 pandemic as parents\u2019 job loss forced many teenagers\u2019 to take over childcare responsibilities for their younger siblings and for others to get a job to help make ends meet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pamela Fullerton,<\/a> a bilingual and bicultural Latina Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor and professor at Northeastern University, believes most schools do not have the resources to support students adequately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Schools, WAKE UP!” Fullerton said. “I was working for a school that had two social workers for the entire school. How are we going to serve our students with that lack of mental help support? We’re not.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spanish is the second-most spoken language in the United States, and the number of Hispanics-Latinos who speak Spanish at home has grown from 24.6 million in 2000 to 39.1 million in 2019, according to the\u00a0Pew Research Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, between 2014 and 2019, the proportion of facilities offering mental health treatment in Spanish declined by nearly 18 percent, according to a study published last week in the journal\u00a0Psychiatric Services<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Language is a clear barrier to seeking and delivering appropriate treatment<\/a> among Hispanic-Latino. Language proficiency is especially important in psychiatric care because the determination of psychiatric diagnoses significantly depends on verbal communication between patients and professionals.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hospitals are required to provide an interpreter for their patients,” said Laura Martinez,\u00a0Mental Health Equity & Inclusion Director with the\u00a0<\/strong>National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)<\/a>. The Joint Commission, the primary accrediting organization of U.S. hospitals, requires institutions to have a language services policy in place.\u00a0“They also have to have signage throughout the hospital in the top five languages in their area.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Omar Corro, Senior Director of Operations with Rincon Family Services<\/a>, says language alone isn’t enough to serve the needs of the Hispanic-Latino community best. “Having that cultural humility is very important as well,” Corro said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hispanics-Latinos are not a monolith. With a seemingly endless range of subgroups and individual variations, culture is important because it bears upon what\u00a0all\u00a0people bring to the clinical setting. Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General <\/a><\/em>finds It can account for minor variations in how people communicate their symptoms and which ones they report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As Chicago, like many cities across the country, continue to crawl from the grip of COVID-19, much of the funding that was available at the height of the pandemic has decreased. Grassroots organizations, like Illinois Unidos<\/a>, which have been on the frontline in helping Hispanics-Latinos through the crisis, fear that the communities who need the most help won’t get the resources they need. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “If they’re getting money, we want to see transparency,” said Dr. Pamela Vergara-Rodriguez, a triple boarded certified physician in psychiatry in the Cook County Health System, says transparency is paramount. “Where is that money going, and who is it serving?” Vergara-Rodriguez said that coalitions need to demand that local and state governments provide data and transparency in allocating resources to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www2.illinois.gov\/cms\/benefits\/StateEmployee\/BeWell\/AwarenessMatters\/PublishingImages\/May21\/Awareness_May_MentalHealth_1.jpg\")
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