In North Texas schools, a new investigation finds little mental health help for Spanish-speaking students

I can’t forget the photo of Jocelyn Rojo — smiling, wearing a yellow blouse, her long hair framing those bright, joyful eyes. Smiles that genuine are hard to forget. What’s even harder is remembering the circumstances that failed Jocelyn and led her to attempt to take her own life.

For many, Jocelyn’s story began and ended in February 2025. But for me, it reflected something much deeper — the neglect of mental health among children from Hispanic immigrant families. My review of eight major North Texas school systems found severe shortages of counselors and psychologists, with many campuses without a single Spanish-speaking mental health professional. For families already living under the pressure of deportation threats and fear, that gap can be the difference between a student getting help and suffering in silence.

In the days before Jocelyn’s suicide attempt, immigration raids and deportations by ICE were a hot topic at her school in Gainesville, a small Texas city about 73 miles from Dallas.

Just 10 days earlier, President Donald Trump had begun his second term with a promise to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. That same week, from January 26 to February 1, searches for the words “deportation” and “deportación” reached their highest peak in 12 months, according to Google Trends data.

Jocelyn’s mother, Marbella Carranza, told us that her daughter had heard comments at school about her family’s immigration status — even that she would “end up alone.” There’s never a single reason behind suicidal behavior, but Jocelyn’s mother believes those words had a deep impact on her.

Who listened to Jocelyn Rojo? And how much does the immigration context really affect the emotional well-being of Hispanic children? To find answers, we went to the first place many Hispanic and immigrant families turn to: their children’s schools.

We wanted to know how many counselors and school psychologists work in schools with the largest Hispanic student populations. We analyzed eight school districts — Dallas, Fort Worth, Irving, Arlington, Garland, Carrollton–Farmers Branch, Grand Prairie, and Mesquite — because they are the biggest in North Texas, each with over 60% Hispanic students.

We had to submit around 30 open records requests to gather detailed data on total student enrollment, Hispanic student numbers, and school counselor counts.

What we found was alarming: Eight out of 10 schools in the Dallas–Fort Worth area doesn’t meet the recommended ratio of one school counselor for every 250 students. On average, these schools have one counselor for every 353 students.

Some cases were even worse. In Fort Worth ISD, certain schools had ratios as high as 700 students per counselor. In Gainesville ISD — where Jocelyn studied — none of the 11 school counselors spoke Spanish, and only two social workers were bilingual, according to district officials.

The situation for school psychologists is even more concerning. In North Texas, a single school psychologist might cover not just one, but several schools at once, said Carmen Needham, regional representative for the Texas Association of School Psychologists.

“The recommended ratio is one school psychologist per 500 students,” Needham told me. “In Texas, we’re seeing numbers more like one psychologist for every 2,500 to 3,000 students.”

In the past five years, there have been proposals to allow other professionals — like social workers, therapists, and teachers — to earn certification as school psychologists to meet demand, but none of those bills passed.

Another finding from the open records data was that not all districts accurately track or report mental health cases by age, ethnicity, race, economic status, or special education needs. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) does have a Mental Health Task Force that has repeatedly urged districts to keep records of counseling sessions with students — but not all comply.

Accessing this data as a journalist was a challenge. I’ve filed open records and FOIA requests in Spain, the European Union, and Mexico — but getting transparent information in the United States has been the hardest.

For instance, Garland ISD charged $306 for data on counselor ratios and the number of student counseling sessions from the previous year. We didn’t request any confidential information — no student names, just general figures. Payment had to be made in person and in cash.

Other districts, like Dallas ISD and Fort Worth ISD, shared their data in clear Excel sheets at no cost, while others only provided it embedded in PDFs, making it hard to process.

Why did we go through all this effort? We wanted to understand how many Hispanic students — and of what ages — were seeking or receiving counseling services in schools. But comparing across districts proved nearly impossible due to inconsistent data collection methods. Having standardized, publicly available data could greatly improve public policy and help schools better address students’ mental health needs.

The situation is even harder for students who only speak Spanish or come from Spanish-speaking homes. In several districts, only about a third of counselors speak Spanish — and in some schools, there isn’t a single psychologist who does.

As a journalist, I wanted to meet the mothers affected by this gap in care. That’s how I ended up in Sherman, a small city near the Oklahoma border. There, at St. Mary’s Catholic School, about 150 Hispanic mothers gathered in a school gym for a spiritual retreat — each one searching for peace or relief.

That’s where I met Heidy Juárez, a kind and strong woman from San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and mother of four. Like many immigrant families, hers is split across two countries: her oldest son studies in Mexico, her teenage daughter recently arrived in the U.S., and her two youngest were born here in Texas.

Heidy carries the constant anxiety of the U.S. immigration climate, while struggling to make ends meet for both sides of her family. Her teenage daughter, who still speaks mostly Spanish, needed psychological support — but getting help took hours, effort, and frustration.

In North Texas schools, Hispanic students whose first language is Spanish feel in their native tongue — yet must translate their emotions into English to be understood. A 2025 study published in Psychiatry Research titled “Speaking the Self: How Native-Language Psychotherapy Enhances Refugee Mental Health” found that therapy in one’s native language allows patients to express themselves more freely, creating deeper and more authentic connections that foster healing.

The shortage of bilingual counselors in majority-Hispanic districts mirrors the broader Texas reality: About 28% of Texans speak Spanish at home, yet only 5.5% of licensed psychologists nationwide offer services in Spanish, according to the American Psychological Association.

But speaking Spanish isn’t enough. True therapeutic connection requires cultural understanding — knowing the dynamics of Hispanic families, the emotional burdens of migration, and the nostalgia for a lost homeland. Such understanding is essential, especially for families under the chronic stress of possible deportation or detention.

Psychologists advise parents not to wait for teachers or school staff to solve these issues for their children. They encourage families to start conversations at home and seek community support — from churches, nonprofits, or local centers. There are always options beyond schools.

During my reporting, I connected several immigrant mothers with bilingual psychologists offering low-cost private sessions. For many immigrant families without health insurance, mental health care is often the last priority. These families are navigating alone while trying to heal their children’s deepest wounds.

The project concluded with a special website titled “Who Listens to Them?” a 14-minute mini-documentary on YouTube, a series of social media cards explaining our findings and listing mental health resources for families, two special packages for Univision’s Dallas newscasts, and a live interview about the investigation. For the English version, we are seeking media outlets that could help share it more widely.

After months of work, I hope this investigation stands as a record of the emotional toll that immigrant families are enduring — and as a quantitative look into the data gaps that make their struggles invisible.