Latinx Mental Health: Stories of the Dominican Diaspora

I am one of the co-founders and the associate editor at La Galería Magazine, a place to document and celebrate the stories of the Dominican Diaspora. La Galería Magazine is an independent, non-affiliated publication that discusses, deconstructs, and explores traditional Dominican symbols, ideologies, and customs in order to better understand our community, history, and culture.

Latinx Mental Health: Supporting Healthy Latinx Communities

I am director of Salud America! A national network that inspires people to drive healthy changes for Latinx children. I also direct the headquarters of the network, the Institute for Health Promotion Research at UT Health San Antonio. I have spent 30 years directing research on human and organizational communication to reduce chronic disease and cancer health disparities affecting the Latinx community, including cancer risk factors, A1:M10 trial recruitment, tobacco prevention, obesity prevention, healthy lifestyles promotion, and more. For Salud America!, I direct a team of passionate communicators who are creating research, stories, and tools to support policy and system changes for Latinx family health.

Latinx Mental Health: Fighting for Policy Change

It definitely has been a journey filled with gratitude, where no day is the same. One day I can be driving three hours out to a rural part of my state to provide a suicide prevention training for a school and the next day working on mental health policy change. At times it's been late nights on a Friday evening (because that's when a crisis happens), calling all my mental health contacts to successfully identify a provider who can take in a new client immediately. Some days it's sitting on the sidewalk sharing a sandwich with my friend Aaron, who is homeless and suffers from mental illness--hoping that our conversation will get him to agree to see a provider.

Latinx Mental Health: Building Bridges Between Latinx and Disability

I am the co-founder of the National Coalition for Latinxs with Disability (CNLD). My job as a leader in this #DisabledLatinx movement is to network and connect with other Disabled and Latinx leaders in the U.S. and those who want to be leaders in the movement. I'm building bridges between the Latinx and Disability worlds. For too long, I've had to split my Latinx and disability identities, and I know that's true for others out there!

Latinx Mental Health: Building a Community

I am Co-Founder and Lead Organizer for Aliados for Mental Health. My job is to construct spaces online and offline to raise awareness about issues related to the mental health of the Latinx community. I organize community events that give a voice to Latinx community members affected by mental illness and those interested in bilingual socially conscious psychotherapy from a healthcare perspective. We share knowledge and resources about mental illness and mental health care in hopes of raising awareness and decreasing stigma in the Latinx community. Our Aliados for Mental Health’s Facebook page is a simple way of “staying woke” to the issues affecting the Latinx mental health community.

Latinx Mental Health: There is Nothing Shameful About Mental Illness

I am the Founder, President, and CEO of Comunilife, Inc. My job is to work with our board, staff, and community to develop culturally appropriate programs that help homeless and at-risk Hispanic New Yorkers access the services they need to live independently and reach their individual potential. In addition to providing direct services, a large part of my job is to advocate on behalf of our clients. This can include working to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness and educating our community on the benefits of early intervention.

Latinx Mental Health: Don't Be Ashamed to Be You

My approach to advocacy starts with sharing my own vulnerability and the ups and downs of my journey. Instead of hiding my bipolar and anxiety I talk about it on social media and start a dialogue out of it for anyone to join. I also travel and speak for various mental health organizations even though most days I’d prefer to be wrapped up in my blanket in bed. I’ve often heard that men don’t talk about their mental health because that makes them weak. I used to hold back due to fear of verbal abuse, but I’ve realized that the more I open up the better my mental health is overall.

Latinx Mental Health: Being Undocumented and Taking Care of Mental Health

I dispel myths and fight stigma by openly talking about my own mental health journey. Navigating a society that constantly reminds me I am not welcome here is hard and can impact my well-being. Some days are harder than others. I try not to shy away from talking about needing counseling and the trauma migration can cause. In my case, I also survived sexual assault. This, compiled with being undocumented, impacted the way I navigated the world and the resources I had access to. I use my documentary, No Le Digas A Nadie - Don't Tell Anyone, to talk about immigration, assault, trauma, and mental health.

Latinx Mental Health: Finding Resources in Your Family and Community

I am the Director of the Latino Youth & Family Immigration Project: Dímelo en Español at Ackerman Institute. We are a project in the institute that provides family therapy to first and second generation Latino immigrant families. We offer a specialized framework that, at its core, emphasizes cultural sensitivity and resiliency in families. I facilitate therapeutic conversations about immigration loss, the unique experience of parenting bi-cultural/bilingual children, trans-nationalism, identity, trauma and, more recently, about the current sociopolitical climate. We do this using the families' mother tongue language, Spanish.