Mental health clinics across the US are helping Latinos bridge language and access barriers

Michelle Mata wasn’t diagnosed with a mental illness until she was 23, after years of suffering. She knew very little about who to ask for help, having grown up in a Latino family in San Antonio that didn’t talk about mental health. At appointments, she was terrified of telling the truth.

“I didn’t want to tell (doctors) that because I knew that as soon as I disclosed what I was feeling my freedom was going to be taken away from me and I was going to be put into the hospital,” said Mata, 53, who talked about her mental health to The Associated Press in the hope of helping others. She now works at the San Antonio chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness as she copes 30 years later with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed that just over one-fifth of Hispanic adults reported having a mental illness, defined in the report as a diagnosed mental, behavioral or emotional disorder that may have interfered with their lives. That's slightly less than white Americans (24.6%) but more than Black Americans (19.7%) and Asian Americans (16.8%).

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussions of mental health. If you or someone you know needs help, reach out to the national suicide and crisis lifeline at 988, or the National Alliance on Mental Illness by calling 1-800-950-6264 or texting “NAMI” to 741741.