Julio 12, 2006
By Elaine Rivera

http://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/2006/07/page/7/

Five years ago when she was 10 years old, Bronx teenager Janine was molested. As she became more depressed over the incident, her thoughts kept turning to death.

“I just didn’t want to be here anymore,” Janine recalled. “I thought it would be better if I was gone.” At 12, she tried to choke herself twice with a scarf, and then she began cutting herself with a pair of scissors. Eventually, her family found out what she attempted to do and Janine, now 15, is in counseling.

Janine’s experience is part of a silent, perplexing, national phenomenon in which young Latinas have the highest rate of attempted suicide or having seriously considered killing themselves.

“This is a public health issue,” said Dr. Luis H. Zayas, a licensed psychologist and professor at Washington University in St. Louis who is spearheading the study. “Whenever you have rates at this level, we should all be concerned.”

Zayas and other mental health experts say that the neglected trend has been occurring for decades. As a young clinician in New York 25 years ago, Zayas said he noticed the disproportionate number of young Latinas attempting suicide. He has been interested in the issue and over the years has pushed for more research.

“It’s a million-dollar question as to why this is happening,” Zayas said. “There’s a combination of forces that are coming together as the girls are moving into the American social experience.”

Those forces include cultural clashes where young women are expected to live by their parents’ strict traditional values while growing up in a contemporary American society that allows far more freedoms for young women; family-related pressures to be caretakers; conflicts with parents, particularly their mothers, or a boyfriend or husband; and uncertainty over their ethnic and racial identity creating a sense of isolation.

Most of the young women are either first or second-generation and come from low-income or poor backgrounds, according to researchers.

“For these young women, the two worlds cannot be more different,” says Belisa Lozano- Vranich, a clinical psychologist who co-authored “The Seven Beliefs,” which addresses depression among Latinas. ”They feel there is no way out – they feel trapped at home and feel like they can’t go outside because they’re misunderstood.”

Experts believe that many of the young women do not actually want to die but act impulsively and out of despair after encountering a conflict and the common way they try to kill themselves is by either taking pills or cutting themselves.

Fifteen-year-old Maritza, who is first-generation Honduran, said she swallowed a handful of aspirin after a particularly bitter confrontation with her mother.

“She was yelling at me about school because I was failing classes,” she said. “I drank the pills because I didn’t want to deal with it.” After taking the pills, her father woke her from a deep sleep. Today, she says she is doing better after receiving counseling.

Vranich said there is a strong, intertwined relationship between Latina mothers and daughters.

“A mother’s opinion is going to carry more weight as far as her daughter’s issues,” Vranich said. “A father’s role is not the same as in American families where they say wait until your father gets home. His opinion holds weight but not in the immediate way that the mother’s does. The father’s role is to be a good provider.”

While Latina teenagers have the highest rate of attempted suicide, the highest rates for actual suicide in the United States are among white, Native American and Native Alaskan men respectively.

For many Latinas, a combination of a cultural stigma to seek mental health services along with the lack of bilingual resources – for both the parents and the children – can compound the problem, mental health experts explain.

“The parents don’t understand therapy. They think it’s insane to talk to someone who is not your cousin,” Vranich said. The other option parents give their daughters, says Vranich, is “to pray.”

Jackie, 28, who is first-generation Dominican and resides in Queens, said both her mother and her sister attempted suicide, her sister even trying twice – first by taking pills and then cutting her wrists. Her mother had swallowed pills and left a note behind but she was rushed to the hospital where her stomach was pumped.

When she had her first baby at 20, Jackie said she suffered from post-partum depression and decided to seek counseling – a taboo in her family because she would be considered “loca.”

“It’s (counseling) not really known because no one speaks about it,” Jackie says. “I think it’s a shame thing – it’s like you did something wrong.”

The 2,000 Census show that there were 117,152 Latinas between the ages of 13 and 19 living in New York City and as the Latino population continues to grow, advocates argue that there is a dire need for services.

Even though a congressional bill – titled the Latina Adolescent Suicide Prevention Act – was introduced in 2000 calling for more funding to look at the issue, mental health advocates say there is just not enough services to address the magnitude of the problem.

Penny Galarza, assistant director of the Davidson Community Center, Inc. in the Bronx who works with many young Latinos, says there is a tremendous need for educational programs, confidential workshops and counseling services.

“They don’t want to face reality,” Galarza said. “It’s an embarrassment on the person’s part who tries to commit suicide so they don’t talk to anyone.”

Galarza also said speaking openly about suicide will alleviate the shame and stigma that surrounds it.

“You don’t see advertisements about suicide,” said Galarza, whose own daughter, Darlene, cut her wrists after her son died from leukemia. “Why is it ignored? We need more publicity about it.”

Janine, the 15-year-old, who tried to choke herself with a scarf two years ago, said counseling has helped her immensely and she now wants to go to college to become a child therapist.

“It’s because of what I went through,” she said. “I don’t want someone to feel like I did.”

Source: El Diario/La Prensa