People used to compare me to cancer patients. I suffer from severe generalized anxiety disorder and subsequent trichotillomania/dermatillomania, which are body-focused repetitive behavior disorders that cause me to repeatedly pick at my skin and hair. When these presented at the young age of 12, I was unaware of their formal term. All I knew was that I was constantly in a state of panic and tugging my eyelashes was the only thing that could soothe me. When my mom first noticed the gap in between my eyelashes months later, she screamed and launched herself at me. How could I do this to myself? Because in her eyes, this was merely self-sabotage to gain attention. I don’t blame her for this, however, since this is what almost any other parent would do from my hometown. I was born and raised in Brownsville, Texas, the city ranked the unhealthiest in the entire country; despite this, it is rather lesser-known. In addition, it also ranked one of the lowest in education and one of the highest in poverty. We border Mexico, which contributes to our nearly 95% Hispanic population. Combining all these factors makes a melting pot for mental illnesses– Many individuals are uneducated on how to find help, and those that aren’t either cannot afford it or refuse to seek treatment because they find it to be taboo. I, unfortunately, belonged to this majority group as it took me years to finally seek treatment. The buildup to finally receiving help was the worst during my sophomore and junior years of high school. Being the youngest in a high-achieving household meant facing an extreme load of academic pressure, and to worsen matters, I was in a rather toxic relationship that I was terrified of leaving due to being suicide baited on multiple occasions. It truly felt like I was carrying the weight of the world in my hands, every day becoming both more of a mental and physical struggle. I struggled to go a single day without tearing out my eyelashes and eyebrows, with the peak of my trichotillomania being having no visible top eyelashes at all as well as no visible eyebrow arch. I had several people tell me to stop being stupid and that I looked like I was going through chemotherapy. I physically couldn’t stop. I looked in the mirror after every “plucking session” and hated who would stare back at me, many times not even recognizing this person. I had also been struggling with dissociation/depersonalization since I was 12, but this exponentially raised the amount of episodes I had. I’d scratch my wrists until they bled, a last resort that something could awake me from the dissociative fugue I succumbed to most days. I’d bite my nails so often that I couldn’t even write without being in pain. I hated myself. I hated who I had become. I had convinced myself that despite being at the top of class, my mental illnesses would not allow me to get anywhere in life. I was, fortunately, able to improve my mental health upon receiving treatment but can never stop thinking of many others from my community who have faced similar struggles and feel that there is no escape. I hope that by becoming a Clinical Neuropsychologist, I can help others to be diagnosed with disorders that may be hugely impacting their wellbeing. My long-term goal is to continue studying mental health within my Hispanic community, making them aware of readily-available resources and mitigating the stigma surrounding the treatment of mental disorders.

It is quite absurd that one word is now able to send me into a complete panic, accompanied by its little acquaintances: nausea, chest pain, and hyperventilation. Goodbye. It is no surprise that mental health is still widely stigmatized despite the rising amounts of psychological illnesses occurring in the population, especially among younger generations. I still remember my first run-on with a mental health crisis; it wasn’t something that I or any other middle schooler should’ve had to experience. Nearing the end of my 7th-grade year, I joined a strongly-bonded friend group. As harsh as it comes off, we all had one thing in common: being Hispanic. We lived where this minority was considered the majority. There was a problem with this, and it was not the lack of diversity; Latinx communities are known to show vulnerability to mental health, with those facing issues involving it being considered “loco.” Some children are verbally abused, spanked, beaten, hit with a “chancla,” etc. Worst of all, living in such a poor, educationally strained environment puts a decline on one’s mental stability for many obvious reasons. One friend of mine was a horrible subject of this, however. Minding my own business one day, I notice them dismantling a pencil sharpener. I wasn’t familiar with anxiety, depression, and other similar problems at the time, but when I saw their use for that pencil sharpener later on in the day, the picture became clearer. I was the first to take those blades away from them and toss them out, and they, fortunately, received the help they desperately needed. I know I did what was right, but the clear vision of how mad they appeared when I took those blades away still pops up in my head occasionally, sending chills throughout my spine. That certainly was not my last experience with mental health issues, though. Before my freshman year of high school, I like to refer to myself as not very “self-aware,” per se. I lived in my own little fantasy land where only what I could visually experience and have firsthand affect me mattered. After all, I was only a small, timid 12-year-old. Events did not really concentrate in my brain, and it took me a prolonged amount of time to process matters. During the summer of 2019, I received a text from a close friend of mine, “Goodbye. It’s been fun. But I’ve got to go.” Goodbye? What was meant by “Goodbye”? All my mindless self could respond with was “???” I did not realize what their words spoke at the time or what I could do; all I knew how to do was watch the time drift by and hope they were alright. To my blessing, they did not do anything too harsh and ended up okay. However, the word “Goodbye” can now send me into panic mode, even in the appropriate context. You may be thinking this is where my narrative ends, in which case scenario you are wrong. Secondhand experiences with these sorts of crises only cause you to start experiencing your own, a phenomenon not particularly considered or understandable until it hits you. After going through these events, my understanding of poor mental health and the psychological illnesses that bear with it has only deepened, and my own experiences within my journey have caused me to have severe anxiety; parents, siblings, friends, teachers, and other acquaintances who have a feeble sense of how bad mental illness can afflict you have attributed to this by not caring or knowing how to treat it, and I do not just mean for my own sake. I am certain some of these individuals suffer from their own mental illness, and by leaving it untreated, they begin to project their emotions onto others, putting a genuine strain on them. As we fight to destigmatize mental health and remove the psychological barrier for those seeking treatment, I want my story to remind others that they are not alone. Poor mental health is not something to be ashamed of; it plagues us at some point or another, anyways. You can make a change, as one person always contributes to a difference.