Bringing mental-health services to Latinos is easier said than done
Ventura County Star, April 30, 2009
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. In the literature of The Partnership for Safe Families, I read: “There is tremendous importance in understanding child abuse and the need for our community to help families overcome the devastating problem. A well-informed and strong family is the greatest defense against child abuse and neglect.” How many adults and youths who hurt children suffer from some kind of mental illness? I suspect it is an incredibly large percentage.
People suffer from myriad mental illnesses they often do not label correctly, recognize or deny. They are major contributing dynamics in the cycle of familial violence and abuse.
Mental illness has always frightened and fascinated me. I have tried throughout my lifetime to ignore and hide from the many varieties of mental illnesses that have afflicted and surrounded me, my family, friends and folks I work with in the community. Like so many of my brothers and sisters in the barrio, I hid from the excruciating pain of not understanding the dimensions of mental illness, through the masks of alcohol, ignorance, denial and bravado.
A lot of denial
I am a Chicano, the benefactor of a machismo legacy, and my/our principal macho mantra is denial and super-stubborn resistance to anything that I/we do not understand. I witnessed the devastating effect of mental illness on me, my loved ones and the people around me.
In retrospect, I can understand that, in stupidity and fear, I attributed the condition to personal weakness. The true and sick macho proclaims: “Mental illness does not exist; the issue is always an issue of personal character, personal strength or weakness! Punto aparte!
I have a relative whose way of coping with mental illness is alcohol abuse, violence, denial and a pathetic lack of ownership of his life, of love and his own self-worth, which reduces him to a tragic poster child for the desperate need for mental-health services to Latinos in our communities. I love him and I don’t know how to help him; hell, I don’t know how to help myself when it comes to mental illness! It has always been our family affliction and help is nowhere to be found. So we suffer silently and alone.
Until recently, I had no other information. No one had ever given me another direction! In our Latino community, mental illness continues to be labeled a personal weakness or character defect, something shameful that must be hidden and denied.
Then, some 15 years ago, came the kids of the KEYS Leadership Academy. They opened up with their brand of unconditional love and started to share their pain, mental anguish, anger, fears, aspirations and dreams with Debbie De Vries and me. I came to understand how courageous they were and that they were always completely, sometimes brutally, honest about their mental anguish.
The recurring theme was that, more than anything, they wanted to love and be loved. These youths opened my mind and heart to the healing power of empathy, honest communication and unconditional love. This became my initial window into the power of the confessional narrative as a therapeutically significant tool, and as an antidote to alienation, numbing silence and mental pain.
I have written extensively regarding our work in Oxnard, where we have developed a highly effective prevention and intervention program — the KEYS Leadership Academy — to empower Oxnard youths and help them in their transformation into community stakeholders. We are proud of the many resources, programs and mentors who have become part of the ever-growing KEYS Leadership Academy family and services. However, what we have never been able to develop is a mental-health-services partnership or a counseling program that is culturally sensitive, affordable and readily accessible for youths who need/want mental-health counseling or therapy. It just does not exist for the youths we are working with.
So, in January, when Gabino Aguirre, a consultant with the Ventura County Behavioral Health Department, invited me to participate in the state Department of Mental Health’s prevention and early-intervention planning process, I jumped at the opportunity. I wanted to articulate my personal experiences and concerns regarding mental-health services as they affect our community, and assist in bringing professional, timely and culturally competent mental-health services to the Latino community, particularly to local Latino youths.
7 community needs identified
Since then, I have learned much about the important work of the prevention and early-intervention planning process, as mandated by the Mental Health Services Act. Seven key community needs have been identified as local priorities:
1. Underserved cultural populations.
2. Individuals experiencing an onset of serious psychiatric illness.
3. Children and youths in stressed families.
4. Trauma-exposed individuals.
5. Children and youths at risk for school failure.
6. Children and youths at risk of or experiencing juvenile-justice involvement.
7. Children and youths at risk of or experiencing stigma and/or discrimination.
I came to realize these priorities are exactly what are lacking in my community and what so many of us desperately need and are looking for. If our community had even minimal access to the seven mental-health-prioritized services, our Latino community would have much better mental health.
That is the sad irony of this planning process, namely, that these are not new revelations. What is new and important is that Ventura County Behavioral Health, under the leadership of Susan Kelly, secured the consultant services of Dr. Aguirre, one of the pre-eminent and most respected Latino leaders in Ventura County, to assure that a diverse and multicultural amalgamation of community stakeholders participates in the process.
A new era
I truly believe this is the dawning of a new era in Ventura County, when, for the first time, culturally sensitive and universal access to mental-health services can be provided to Latinos, indeed to all of the underserved cultural populations identified as priority populations.
It will take the vigilance and participation of the community to make sure that Ventura County Behavioral Health not only does the research and data collection, but develops and implements the most effective mental-health services and programs available to our community. Universal mental-health services for all our underserved populations will quickly transform our community into a safer, stronger and more peaceful county and, perhaps in the years to come, we can designate April as “Embrace and Empower all of our Children with Love Month”!
Armando Vazquez of Oxnard is co-founder and director of the KEYS Leadership Academy at the Cafe on A in Oxnard.
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