According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, more than half of Hispanic young adults ages 18 to 25 with serious mental illness may not receive treatment for reasons including language barriers and cultural differences.
As Hispanic Heritage Month officially beings, Allina Health is highlighting a program aiming to change that.
Change to Chill is a virtual resource for teenagers. The free website helps users identify what is contributing to stress, anxiety and/or depression, and explains various methods to build resilience.
"We actually identified stress in teens as a growing health concern in all of our communities that Allina Health serves," said Susan Nygaard, community health improvement manager for Allina Health.
In addition to the virtual space, Allina works with 60 schools by introducing faculty and students to the program and providing funding to create "chill zones" within their buildings.
Now the reach is even larger.
"We have had our language service department translators working vigorously over the last few months to translate all of the materials on the Change to Chill website into Spanish," Nygaard said.
Esmeralda Garcia is an AmeriCorps Promise Fellow who helps connect El Colegio High School students with mental health resources. She believes offering resources in Spanish could change the stigma around getting help.
"It would help a lot," Garcia said. "Mainly here at El Colegio, most of our students are first-comers from other countries."
Garcia was born in the U.S. and has family in Mexico. She graduated from El Colegio two years ago but the path wasn't easy. She says her mental health suffered due to traumatic events she experienced.
Garcia says her teachers noticed something was wrong and referred her to the school therapist. They met nearly every day.
"I am able to implement into my life the ideas and the techniques that she would talk to me about of how I could learn from my traumatic experiences," Garcia said. "With the Latino community, mental health, it's something that it's not well talked about. It's like if you have mental problems, well that's on you. You go do you. You're loquito. You're crazy."
"Making those opportunities for the minorities, for Spanish speakers, for Asian speakers, for natives and whatever, it's very, very important."
Allina Health is now working on translating the Change to Chill program into Somali. The website will also be updated with resources for the LGBTQ community.