The pictures might look like a simple painting. However, it was my first ever painting commission that I have done. I have always loved painting, but after many people rejecting my art, I developed low self-esteem and kept my art to myself. These were the first paintings that I ask to do and that I was proud of doing. I finally reach the courage to put myself and my art out there.

When I moved to this country at the age of 12, adapting to a new culture was hard to do by myself. I became an outcast right away by my peers and even teachers. There was another Latinx girl who spoke Spanish but refused to talk to me because it was embarrassing. We are teaching the youth that speaking Spanish is shameful. The school did not understand my capabilities to learn and adapt, and they assume I must be dumb. They were not able to aid in my transition. I want to provide the help I was not given as a child for other Latinx children who are going or went to similar experiences know they are not alone and help them. Unfortunately, I have met other immigrants who had the same understanding of feeling isolated. Due to such encounters, I believed that the school system was missing a vital component. In my last year of High School, I became aware of counselors helping other students with their mental health. When talking about it with other friends, they were not aware of schools having any psychological help. That led me to believe that mental health was something for only a few people. I joined San Jose State University as an art major, which is something I do love. However, I took a psychology class my first year, and I noticed that mental health was for everyone. After my first psychology class, I knew this is what I truly wanted to study. So far, my psychological impact has been changing the stigma of it being for crazy people with my close friends and family. My family had a very small-minded view of what psychology meant. As another Latinx family that puts a stigma on psychology which is something I am fully ready to obtain more education on how to help others move out of the stigma of psychology is for crazy people. During my third year of undergraduate, I researched what a school psychologist does. My research led me to realize that my transition from when I was young would have been less stressful if I had the guidance of a psychologist. Now I am pursuing a master's in clinical psychology where I can be the help the next immigrant can have. Mental health is significant to me; being able to help others ease their transition is what I inspire to be.

I believe the biggest barrier keeping immigrants from obtains mental health services is ourselves. We as an immigrant community barely talk about the struggle that is immigrating. I am Mexican and immigrated here when I was 12 years old. The culture shock at a young age was hard to process as it took me years to adapt to a new style of life. When wanting to speak about it, all I would be told is to be grateful I am in a better country. Indeed I am but that does not take away the struggle that it was to get where I am today. I am pursuing a master's degree in clinical psychology with an emphasis on the Latinx community to be able to help my community, as an immigrant and a Latina. I believe the best way to solve this issue is to talk about it. Start talking about our experience without judgment, listen to one another in what we can do to help. I am studying my field so I can start learning how to help my community back. Another barrier is resources in our communities, many mental health recourses are expensive. Even with insurance, you have to have a certain label for anyone to keep with therapy. Many of the resources are monolingual, English as it the main language here. Mental health needs more recourse that fit in with our communities and can be translated into our languages. In the program, I am studying I would be learning Clinical Psychology in English and Spanish. I would be able to reach out to Spanish-only speakers, as well as bilingual people. I am excited to be able to help my community back and hopefully, I will be able to obtain money to study in my dream program. Thank you for your time.