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eligible black and white children, according to state data. The numbers don’t include those enrolled in managed care. Eric Waters, coordinator for the behavioral health program at the Life Academy High School leads a discussion with Fernanda May, 17, and Graciela Perez, 17, at La Clínica de la Raza in Oakland, California, which provides training in first aid and places students in internships with mental health organizations. (Heidi de Marco/KHN) (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders seek treatment at a rate even lower than Latinos. Although hospitalizations are also increasing rapidly among that population, the raw numbers remain relatively small.) Leslie Preston, the behavioral health director of La Clínica de La Raza, in East Oakland, says that the shortage of bilingual, bicultural mental health workers limits Latino kids’ access to preventive care, which could lead to crises later on. “Everybody’s trying to hire the Spanish-speaking clinicians,” she said. “There’s just not enoughassociated with mental illness. At Life Academy of Health and Bioscience, a small, mostly Latino high school in East Oakland, students grow up amid pervasive violence and poverty. “We’re just told to hold things in,” said 17-year-old Hilda Chavez, a senior. Students often don’t seek help because they fear discussing mental health problems will earn them a label of “crazy,” Chavez said. Last year, the school, in conjunction with the Oakland-based La Clínica de La Raza, started a program to interest students in careers in mental health care. The program provides training in “first aid” instruction to help people in crisis, and places students in internships with mental health organizations. Nubia Flores Miranda, 18, participated in the program last year and now is majoring in psychology at San Francisco State University. Miranda said she became interested in a career in mental health after she experienced depression and anxiety during her freshman year at Life Academy. Seeing a schoolcounselor “changed my life around,” she said. But she saw that her peers were wary of seeking help from counselors at the school, most of whom were white and lived in wealthier, safer neighborhoods. Once, when a classmate started acting out at school, Miranda suggested she talk to someone. “She told me she didn’t feel like she could trust the person — they wouldn’t understand where she was coming from,” she said. Graciela Perez, 17, and Nayely Espinoza, 17, hold up their group assignment during a class presentation. The students are preparing for their mental health internships by discussing solutions to potential scenarios, such as gun violence, suicide and depression. (Heidi de Marco/KHN) The shortage of services is especially evident in the Central Valley, where many agricultural workers are Latino. Juan Garcia, an emeritus professor at California State University, Fresno, who founded a counseling center in the city, says the drought and economic downturn have exacerbateddepression, anxiety, substance abuse and psychotic breaks among Latinos of all ages. “The services to this population lag decades behind where they should be,” he said. In Fresno County, psychiatric hospitalizations of Latino youth more than tripled, to 432, between 2007 and 2014. Hospitalizations of their white and black peers about doubled. Liliana Quintero Robles, a marriage and family therapy intern in rural Kings County, also in the state’s Central Valley, said she sees children whose mental health issues go untreated for so long that they end up cutting themselves and abusing alcohol, marijuana, crystal meth and OxyContin. “There’s some really, really deep-rooted suffering,” she said. Out in the unincorporated agricultural community of Five Points, about 45 minutes from Fresno, almost all of the students at Westside Elementary School are low-income Latinos. When principal Baldo Hernandez started there in 1981, he’d see maybe one child a year with a mental health issue. Thesedays, he sees 15 to 30, he said. He blames dry wells and barren fields, at least in part. “I’ve had parents crying at school, begging me to find them a home, begging me to find them a job,” he said. In some parts of the Valley and other places, the closest hospitals that accept children in psychiatric crises are hours away. Children can be stuck in emergency room hallways for days, waiting for a hospital bed. “It makes for a very traumatized experience for both families and children,” said Shannyn McDonald, the chief of the Stanislaus County behavioral health department’s children’s system of care. Recently, the county expanded its promotora program, which enlists members of the Latino community to talk to their peers about mental health. In the small town of Oakdale, a slim, energetic 51-year-old promotora named Rossy Gomar spends 60 to 70 hours a week serving as cheerleader, educator and sounding board for many of the Latino women and children in the town. Hilda Chavez, 17, at LaClinica de la Raza, says students at her high school don’t really discuss mental health problems. Chavez says participating in the program has made her consider a career in behavioral health. (Heidi de Marco/KHN) Gomar’s office in the Oakdale Family Support Network Resource Center is cluttered with open boxes of diapers and donated children’s toys and clothing. “Look at my office,” she laughs. “We don’t fit.” Gomar says many of the women she works with don’t recognize that they are depressed or abused. Children see their parents’ problems and don’t know where to turn for help. “There are many young people who don’t have any hope,” she said. But little by little, she has seen some good results. One 17-year-old client is a student at Oakdale High School. The girl, whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy, said that earlier this year, problems at school and a break-up with her boyfriend had her struggling to get out of bed each morning. She began drinking, using drugs andthinking about suicide. She was scared to talk to her parents, she said, and kept everything inside. One day, she walked into Gomar’s office and started crying. “She told me ‘Everything is ok. We want you here,’” the girl said. “When I was talking with her, I felt so much better.” supports KHN’s work with California ethnic media. This story was produced by , an editorially independent program of the . Categories: , , Tags: , ,