By Juan Vidal — 2016
The talent is there, but it’s not being showcased and encouraged on a broader scale.
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CLEAR ALL
The United States is going through a national examination of conscience on the question of race, and the Latino community is no exception.
Mental health issues in people of color are often misunderstood.
In the past year and a half, Asian American Christians have been calling out the anti-Asian bias they see in their own congregations.
Racism, or discrimination based on race or ethnicity, is a key contributing factor in the onset of disease. It is also responsible for increasing disparities in physical and mental health among Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC).
Sometimes, doing the work means looking at yourself and your actions first.
“I still eat rice and beans. I just use brown rice now,” said Annya Santana of Menos Mas, a wellness company that speaks to African-American and Latinx communities.
The Latinx community is just as vulnerable to mental illness as the general population, but faces disparities in treatment.
Eso es para locos. Esta generación... siempre inventando. These are the words I’d hear anytime I mentioned therapy or mental health growing up.
I’m learning that my challenge isn’t just to unlearn what my family has taught me, but to put myself in situations that would reaffirm the new lessons I was trying to replace the old ones with.
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“In Latin America, there’s been a great deal of progress around gay and lesbian identities,” Ortiz says. “But with being transgender and non-binary, a lot of people are still unsure what it all means and I believe it’s connected to the words we use.”