Pressures on Latina Teens Show in Suicide Planning, Attempts

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Pressures on Latina Teens Show in Suicide Planning, Attempts; In a Bright New Land, Dark Thoughts Emerge

(April 17, 2006) -- “The girls want to become American. They want to do what American girls do. Their parents want to keep them in their culture. It’s stressful. It’s frustrating.”

Michele Limas, 13, a student at Northeast Middle School, is cheerful and optimistic but acknowledges the pressures Hispanic girls face.

Diana Morales, 10, isn’t among those who harbor darker thoughts, but often takes on adult responsibilities as her parents speak mostly Spanish. She held her sister Tanya, 2, recently at Cabot Westside Health Center.

Teens like Denisse Mendez (left) and Ana Lopez at Northeast Middle School in Kansas City have an upbeat outlook, but the 13-year-olds recognize problems facing Hispanic girls.

Brandy Herrera, a program leader with the Wyandot Mental Health Center

They are 13-year-old girls: bright, Mexican and, they say through a translator, happy.

Still…

How many of you, they’re asked, have a female friend or relative who has attempted suicide?

The five girls at Northeast Middle School, tentative, look toward one another.

Four raise their hands.

“It is because of the pressures,” seventh-grader Maria Rivera says.

Across America, the debate over U.S. immigration policy has reached fever pitch.

In recent days, millions of pro- and anti-immigrant advocates have taken to the streets in protest as lawmakers, horns locked, remain at a standstill over divisive issues: Should the U.S.-Mexico border be clamped shut or opened wider? Should millions of undocumented workers and their families be granted amnesty?

Yet coursing beneath the surface of this churning debate is a grave paradox now gaining national and local attention: For those who risk their lives coming to America, living in America may be hazardous to their health — and for no one more urgently than Hispanic teenage girls.

Luis H. Zayas

“This is the land of opportunity,” says Luis H. Zayas, a professor of social work and psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis. “We risk our lives for opportunity.”

Indeed, nationwide, the state of immigrant health on all fronts is now getting closer attention.

In St. Louis, Zayas is now one year into a four-year, $1.8 million study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, of perhaps the most disturbing trend:

Close to 25 percent of Hispanic teenage girls — one in four, more than any other group of teens — report having seriously considered committing suicide. The group includes not just Mexican teens, but also teens of other Latin heritages.

One in five has made a suicide plan. According to figures collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 percent — almost double the national average — have attempted suicide at least once.

Upbeat teens, Maria and her friends at Northeast Middle say they have never felt so despondent. But they well recognize how common suicide attempts are among other Hispanic teenage girls like them.

Brandy Herrera, a program leader with the Wyandot Mental Health Center, recalls one teen who tried to kill herself with pills.

“I talk to girls about it all the time,” Herrera says. “The girls want to become American. They want to do what American girls do. Their parents want to keep them in their culture. It’s stressful. It’s frustrating.”

In Kansas City, health workers are responding.

At the Cabot Westside Health Center, where the clientele is largely Hispanic, more than 25 percent of its 7,000 annual patients reported suffering some form of depression or anxiety.

Again teenage Hispanic girls are among the most vulnerable. Forty-five percent reported having, within one year, prolonged feelings of sadness or hopelessness that lasted at least two weeks.

Armed with a $113,000 grant from the Healthcare Foundation of Greater Kansas City, Cabot will soon begin to add mental health screenings to all annual exams and checkups. Counseling will be offered at the nearby Mattie Rhodes Center, a nonprofit that provides children with social services, counseling, art and other programs.

Among those programs is GLOBE — an acronym for Guidance, Learning and Opportunities in a Bi-cultural Environment — at Northeast Middle.

Each day after school, Maria Rivera and other seventh- and eighth-graders, mostly Mexican and new to the United States, gather to improve their English and math skills. They also talk personally about the challenges of living in a new world.

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On this recent day, the five girls — Maria, Michele Limas, Ana Lopez, Denisse Mendez and Cristal Valdez — spoke of living between the old and new traditions of Mexico and America. They spoke of how, as girls, the pressures, obligations and expectations are far more intense than for boys.

In the U.S., they say, they are the ones who, as “responsible girls,” are called upon to translate for their parents. They read the mail. They answer the phone. They interpret the bills. They take off school to go to help talk to doctors. They help their parents navigate the bus system or social services.

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Last updated: 04/06

Pressures on Latina Teens Show in Suicide Planning, Attempts; In a Bright New Land, Dark Thoughts Emerge

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