Angela Maria Naso wrote this story while participating in the California Health Journalism Fellowship, a program of the Center for Health Journalism at USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism.
This story was reported as a project for USC Annenberg's Center for Health Journalism National Fellowship.
Luis Nolasco, 25, did not know what the psychological consequences would be when he came from Mexico with his family, illegally, at the age of nine. Then, in his late teens, he noticed he began to feel sad and pessimistic.
“Welcome to NAMI en español,” says Pedro Arciniega, in Spanish, before an audience of more than 35 participants who were crammed into a room to attend a month meeting to hear about one young man’s journey who struggles with a severe mental illness.
Zuher Belal put a black pencil on the rectangular piece of paper stretched out on a table. The 21-year-old native of Syria drew a Muslim man with arms outstretched in prayer. Then, he drew an airplane dropping a bomb.
“I call it present traumatic stress disorder. When you have post-traumatic stress disorder it means the trauma has ended. With our people it is a perpetual trauma that is inflicted on almost a daily basis,” one lifelong resident of Bakersfield says.
Three out of four adults of Mexican origin who experience a mental illness will not seek professional help, and the problem of under utilization is even higher among Mexican immigrants.
“The word we use for mental illness in Vietnamese is ‘crazy,’” Lanie Tran said. “If you’re a Buddhist, you believe you or your family members did something wrong in a previous birth. If you’re Catholic, you believe God is punishing you for something you did that was mean or wrong.”
The shocking call came a decade ago from campus police at UC Berkeley. Kwang Ho Kim's son, a straight-A student, had dumped all his clothes on the bed and set them on fire.
Criminalizing pregnant women and new mothers for drug dependency problems leads to poorer health outcomes while disproportionately punishing low-income women of color, argues maternal health advocate Emily Eckert.
