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I’m Listening: Talking away the dark
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From Odyssey, in partnership with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, welcome to I'm Listening, Talk Away the Dark. A special conversation about mental health and suicide prevention in the Hispanic community. Odyssey's Liz Hernandez from 947 The Wave is joined by American Foundation for Suicide Prevention expert Vic Armstrong, an AFSP supporter and mental health advocate, Gabby Vargas for this meaningful conversation. Now, Liz Hernandez. Hello everyone, I'm Liz Hernandez. Welcome to Talk Away the Dark. We are going to focus on mental health and suicide prevention within the Hispanic community. I'd like to welcome our two guests today, Vic Armstrong and Gabby Vargas. Hello. I'd kind of like to set the floor first with Vic. You introducing yourself and your expertise, which is so important for today's conversation. Thank you. I'm Vic Armstrong. I'm vice president for health equity and engagement with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. And I work with AFSP spans across our communications work, our policy work, and our programs work helping to bring clinical and equity expertise across that work. And a large part of that is really looking at how we can can develop programs and initiatives that really relate are more relatable to particularly to historically marginalized communities. Beautiful. And Gabby? My name is Gabby. I am currently the founder and owner of Puebla Studio. It's a community mental well-being space in Elginale, Illinois, and home to a nonprofit that I founded about two years ago, the National Hispanic Suicide Prevention Network. And we focus on mental health awareness and overdose prevention as well as suicide grief support, supporting families that have lost someone to suicide. And I'm also a proud volunteer for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. I am a bilingual talk safe slice presenter for AFSP. I'm just really proud of the work they're doing and a collaborator with me now in spreading the awareness within the Hispanic community. And the heart of this really starts with Gabby's story because you yourself are a suicide survivor. At the age of 25 years old, I faced a severe mental health crisis. At that point, I was already a mother to two young boys. And I felt trapped. I was in a place where I was a very young mom going through a divorce. And I plan to take my own life. I do thank God and all the great people in my life that came through for me at that time. And out of shame, I kept it at a time of day secret. I'm never imagining that a year later, my 18-year-old cousin would take his own life. And his flaws led me to seek professional help. Also, let me see the importance of mental health, especially in childhood. And so that was the beginning of my community. That was the beginning of a time in my life that I was able to see firsthand within my family, how suicide laws affected all of us in different ways. And so seeing how much pain came from it, it made me realize that I needed to get professional help. And I didn't want my family to go through another loss, at least not my loss. And that led me to get professional help. So now that I've been in the field, I realize how much we need to speak about topics. And I love the topic, the name of today's topic, Talking Away the Dark. Because it took me to share the darkness of my story, to be able to get the help that I really needed. And now I'm able to do that within my community. But, you know, becoming a law survivor, I also got to see how little of support existed for survivors within my community. So working firsthand with families has allowed me to find a purpose and just give back now and be that person that I needed when I contemplated suicide myself. What were some of the factors that led to sort of the snowballing effect of feeling that there was no hope? Yeah, so, you know, looking back in my life as a small child, I had two great parents that loved us and that provided, you know, with what they had at the moment. And I do think that a lot of my upbringing that was within a religious household, some of those things affected us in the way that we asked for help. You know, sometimes within our church, we were told that, you know, if you were struggling, if you were sad, you weren't doing the right things in front of God, or you were just, you were made to feel shameful for that being okay. So for me, it was there. Also, you know, we were struggling to survive, I would say. So, you know, you don't really want to worry your parents anymore than they already are worried about things in life. Culturally, you know, we don't really talk about mental health. I think, you know, we laugh about it a little bit now, but I remember when we did share with our parents about certain things they were struggling with, it was always like, well, you know, you're here now in the United States, speaking English, like you're in a better place, like you have nothing to complain or worry about. Gabby, I want to put a pin in it right there really quick, because I want to ask Vic Armstrong about the cultural impact of this idea that we can pray things away, or that, you know, it's shameful to speak outside resources. Can we help talk about that stigma and how important it is to remove that? Yeah, and I think that that theme of not talking about mental health and emotional challenges, and especially in Black and Brown communities, the theme that I hear a great deal. And I think, as a myself growing up, the son of a preacher, I heard that narrative a lot. I didn't grow up here. You know, today we're talking about talking with the dark. What I heard growing up in my community was what happens in this house stays in this house. And we, you know, we try to encourage people to call a hotline, and I still remember, you know, hearing all you need is prayer, all you need is faith. If you had more faith, you know, you wouldn't be going through these things. And I think what sometimes can look a little different, I think, in Black and Brown communities, is that oftentimes the resources, the culturally relevant resources that speak to who you are, and they really can contradict and counteract some of that narrative doesn't always exist in our communities. And so that narrative, that stigma really has room to breathe. And we end up relying on the things that we feel like are tried and true. That's our faith. That's our church. The church is in the community. And so we've grown accustomed to going to the church and relying on the church for other needs. And so that narrative that you don't need mental health services, you only need faith, is one that is very common in a lot of communities. Yeah. And that can be, you know, harmful to only seek one resource, because I do believe a spiritual practice can be a very beautiful thing in our healing support. But we also have to seek professional help as well, especially when we're in a very dark place. Absolutely. And I think that's part of what gets lost in the narrative. And in part, it's because we don't always have resources reaching into historically marginalized communities, whether black and brown communities, rural communities, we don't always have resources reaching into the communities that can really push back on that narrative or resources where we can reach out oftentimes for mental health resources and especially mental health resources that have cultural relevance. And when we don't have those things, it really becomes more of an inward-facing conversation. And again, it allows that stigma to grow. But I do want to your point about faith-based communities, and I'm sure Gabby can attest to this too, there's a role for the faith-based communities in addressing these challenges, because the same way that folks turn to the church for their spiritual needs and emotional needs, there's also an opportunity to turn to the church as a conduit for connecting folks to mental health needs. We just need to work with our faith-based communities and educate our faith-based communities, I think, on how to be more of a resource to the people that depend on them. We can't be afraid to have these conversations. So Gabby, let's then fast forward to where now you are witnessing someone in your family lose their life to being in a really dark place, and that was your wake-up call. It definitely was, especially because he was so young, and a lot of times we think, you know, they're so young they have everything, like what could possibly be wrong in their life, right? So for me it was that I thought, like, if you follow through with it, what's going to stop me next time? And, you know, going back to talking about resources, a lot of times we're afraid of where those resources may lead us, like, is it going to be in the system? Is somebody going to find out about them later, especially when you are living within family that is undocumented? A lot of times families are afraid of asking for help because immigration might be involved or the law enforcement might be involved. And so for me, I think that what stopped me for getting resources was the fear that somebody's going to find out something that I don't want anyone to know, right? And so it is difficult. It is difficult to be to let it all out, but I am so glad that I did, and I will forever be grateful for my therapist, who I think changed my life, and going to see a therapist allowed me to work on things that I hadn't talked about since my childhood. It allowed me to become a better mom, to be more present. You know, I was at that point when I almost took my life with my kids, because it would have been a murder suicide. I remember working at a hospital, being a young professional, but I had a lot of stressors in life that I never shared with people. Like, here I am working at a hospital with a Spanish medical interpreter, and the theme, or the thing they would always tell us was, our patients come first, you know, you're here to help and serve. And so it was also very difficult for me as a health care professional to say, "I'm not okay, and I'm struggling." And, you know, that was something that I hid behind us, mild, you know, patients come first, but let me make sure my patients and my job are okay. And I would go home and just feel completely, you know, I was like not present for my children. And so getting professional work allowed me to see that I wasn't the only one struggling. My children were struggling. You know, they were having their own behavior issues at school. And so when I began to get professional help, I was able to be a different mother for my children. And then I think back all the time, like, if I hadn't gotten the help, how much of everything that I was already carrying, I was going to pass down to my children. Right, because they're watching you process your own grief, and that's how they're learning to process theirs. So where can someone begin? And this is for you, Vic or Gabby, who is afraid to begin the conversation, because it's taboo to dishonor your family by talking about what is private, because you're afraid that if you're undocumented, that you may get the officials involved. How can we begin to let people know that it is okay to ask for help, that it is okay to seek support? Where can they begin? So one thing I would advise is if you go to our website, FSP.org, under I talk away the dark platform, you'll see resources there on how to have conversations with people who may be reluctant to talk about their child. And there are a few things that we stress. One of them is that if you suspect that someone is thinking about suicide, if you think that someone's in a bad place mentally, try to have a conversation with them alone, try to make sure they feel heard. I think oftentimes, even when Gabby talked about her story and she talked about the things that she was going through, the message that we often get from the people around us is, "You're okay. You don't really need help. You don't need to be talking about this. Just pray about it." And what we don't always do is create safe space for that person to say, "But this is what I am feeling." Local news can come at you fast. Want the latest on what's happening in your backyard? Download the free Odyssey app. Follow your local news station, and you'll get alerts on the top stories making headlines in your city. You can stay in the know, no matter what you're up to. And be among the first to find out when news breaks. Plus, keep tabs on weather and traffic so you're never caught off guard. To get started, download the Odyssey app. That's A-U-D-A-C-Y, and follow your local news station. This is for both of you because I would love to hear from the professional side and then the actual survivor side. We tiptoe around suicide. We tiptoe around the word. We tiptoe around people who are vulnerable. And it is important that we speak up and say, "Hey, are you struggling? Do you feel alone?" But I think the consensus is that we're afraid we may say the wrong thing. So Gabby, I first want to ask you how important is it for someone who is struggling with thoughts of suicide to actually say, "Hey, I see you. I can feel that you're struggling. Is there a way I can support you through this?" Because I think for the person on the outside, again, we're just so afraid to say the wrong thing. You know, one thing that I realized, especially helping families that have lost someone to suicide, that a lot of us that have struggled feel a lot of times very responsible for the response that someone may have. One thing that led me from asking for help further was thinking, "What are they going to think about me later? Even if this gets better, what are they going to think about me later?" One thing that I feel like a lot of families have to realize is that we have a lot of beliefs and things that we have to unlearn first. The way we talk about these topics, sometimes we've never even, like you said, said the word out loud. You know, it's normalizing the conversation first. Just like we talk about diabetes, we talk about diabetes, about heart disease, realizing that suicide is a public health problem and that it can happen to anyone, right? Suicide does not discriminate. Helps us be more okay with speaking about it, right? So normalizing the conversation, it's a mental health problem, but how do we approach it as a family? Instead of it always being about crisis and when somebody's struggling, like, how do you talk about this conversation when nobody's struggling or when there is in a crisis? You know, I realized this weekend, one of the singers from One Direction took his life. So there are a lot of opportunities, even with celebrities, that as parents, we can sit with our children and say, "How are you feeling about this?" Right? What do you think about this worry in the media, this celebrity? Like, it's not a topic that our kids don't have access to. They are seeing the news, they see the word, they're being spoken about this topic. So I think as parents, don't be afraid to talk about it because they're being exposed to it already. So I think what I see a lot of the parents that I work with, especially Hispanic, is they're afraid to ask because they're not sure what to do, right? And so I think vulnerability goes a long way. When you as a parent can say, "I am not sure what you're going through, but I will be here with you. Let's talk to someone. Let's ask information. Again, not pretend that you know what's happening, goes a long way. Let's work on this together." Instead of, I feel like a lot of parents, we feel like we should know what's going on and if we don't, that causes fear. I think be vulnerable with your children. I see a lot of youth that don't come to their parents because their parents have this righteous, perfect parenting cycle, right? So you're not going to come and talk to someone about what you're struggling if they are never vulnerable. If they never show you that, they can be sad or have a bad day. Go ahead, Victor, yes. Yeah, as I was going to say, I also think what Gab is describing also is the way that it will break the generational cycle of being afraid to talk about it. It takes parents being willing first to be vulnerable with their children, and allow their children space to talk about what's going on with them, listening non-justmentally. As we model that behavior for our young people, we start to see that generational stigma start to melt away. I also think it's important for us to understand that for our younger generation, they're really kind of in a different place around the conversations about mental health. They're much more willing to have this conversation than folks in my generation where we're willing to have the conversation. We just recently participated in a national poll, Harris poll, FSP, National Excellence, Suicide Prevention Resource Center. We found that 9 out of 10 people today believe that there is something that can be done to help someone who's experiencing suicidal thinking. And not too long ago, that was not the way that people saw it. We also learned from the survey that people do feel they will be willing to reach out and help someone who was struggling. But we also know there are gaps. There are gaps in having resources that speak to the nuances of race and culture and ethnicity. Those are challenges that we still have to deal with, and part of that really is spending time with people in those communities who represent those different communities. Just like we're doing today and having this conversation with Gabby, we need to allow communities to help us to understand better. How do we reach into communities? How do we normalize the conversation? Because for decades, we've had a one-size-fits-all approach to suicide prevention. And we've learned better now that we need to have resources that are culturally relevant to communities, that we need to think differently about what access looks like in different communities. Yeah, I want to talk about the continued support you felt, Gabby, in your journey, because I can't imagine not having you here in this conversation right now. I can't imagine the shining light that you are and all you've done for your community and how beautiful that is. What took you from a place of darkness to a place where now you can extend yourself and give other people support because that is such a powerful transition. Number one, finding a professional that you feel comfortable with or your children feel comfortable with. You know, I hear a lot of people say, you know, I'm not going to take you anymore because they don't want to go to the therapist. And I always tell them, look, talk to them, listen to them. What is it that they don't like about this therapist? Because if they don't feel well with them, then it shouldn't be a bad one to take them into therapy. Therapy should feel good. Therapy should feel comfortable. So for me, having a therapist that met me where I was at was wonderful. So it was due to my therapist's advice that I should start volunteering in some way. I feel like that was a huge, a huge, wonderful thing that happened in my life. So she was like, you know, instead of doing things that may be negative or self-harming, why don't you start looking for ways to volunteer and give back to the community? And that's kind of where my whole suicide advocacy journey started. And that's where I talk about ASSP in such a wonderful way because meeting ASSP was like meeting an organization that believed in my story and believed in me. And so first it was my passion, right? Realizing that I had a story that could potentially save lives and could relate to other people that were struggling and they could relate to me, I wanted to give back. And I wanted, I just like found my life purpose doing this work in some way. So meeting with people, me that sponsored me to become a a bereavement facilitator, that sponsored me to become a youth mental health first aid instructor, pretty much finding an organization of people that poured into my life, not just like go get better, but go get better and do something purposeful in your life really helped me get through times that were dark. We were the most susceptible people. You know, we hear a lot about team very susceptible because of social media, because of the pressure. So I just want to give an understanding of where we need to place our care and our support. When we talk about young people, young people are much more open to having these conversations and a lot of older people are. But we also know that according to central disease control, young people are 76% more likely to go to appear than they are to go to an adult or someone else when they're when they're experiencing a crisis. So part of what we have to also do is make sure that we're arming young people with the right information. So young people are open to hearing it, but what we don't want is peers going to peers who are uninformed about how to help and how to break people from how to be supportive. So part of what I think we need to be doing is we do need to be reaching out to our young people because the one they are more receptive, but they're also our generation of tomorrow and they are also going to be a huge piece of how we break this generational cycle of stigma and about and about and not talking about mental health. The other thing I think that to me is important in this conversation about our youth is in Gabby alluded to it. And when I was growing up, I heard messages like you're black, we're resilient, we survive slavery, we can survive anything. And what that often says to young people, like the messages Gabby heard about being strong, you're in America now, you should be okay. What that message is to our youth is you don't have the right to experience the feelings that you feel. You don't have the right to feel depressed. You don't have the right to experience suicidal thinking. And so for that reason also, I think it's extremely important that we are reaching into our younger generation having these conversations with them. Now, at the same time, we also understand that there are older people that are struggling as well, but when we look at where the trends are, whether we're talking about Hispanic community or black community, the trends where we're trending the fastest with increased rates of suicides really in our younger population. And so I really think we need to be focusing on them. I'd love to leave people with the resources that they need. Vic, if you want to go ahead and lead us in that direction. Yeah, I would encourage people to go to our website, AFSP.org. You can find information on our website as we talked about here. They can give you tips on how to have a conversation with someone. You can also find information on website about how you can get involved, how you can find a walk near you, how you can find a support group, things that you can do to support folks in your community and resources you can bring to your community. We have resources specifically designed for black and brown communities. And so I encourage folks, go to our website and find out how you can get involved in helping us to stop suicide. One thing I do remind people about when they're supporting others is don't tell people you're always going to be there to help them. Don't give them that false promise because, you know, life keeps busy and we don't always have the time to be there. So resources like 988 are a great resource, not just for the people struggling, but those that are supporting others so that you don't carry the guilt of always having to be there for someone when sometimes realistically you can't because life, you know, life is busy. Vic and Gabby, I'd like to spend a little bit more time talking about the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline and the importance and role it plays in giving everyone support. And I'm talking about not only people that are struggling but the supporters as well. 988 is a three digit number that you can call, you can text 988 and be connected to a trained counselor who can connect you with the help and the services and support you need when you need it. And we just learned within the last week or so that 988 now has a geo routing feature because what was happening before was that if you dialed 988, you were routed to wherever your cell phone was registered. We now have geo routing feature, you can get services, you can get resources connected to resources wherever you are at the time. And so I encourage people all the time and I think I mentioned briefly earlier about a gentleman that I encourage called 988. But the idea behind 988 is that when you call, if you need follow up, you can be connected to mental health resources, not necessarily a 911 response. And so I spent a lot of time actually in the 988 space and trying to educate communities about calling 988 because it's still an issue for, again, a lot of black and brown communities that have not been accustomed to reaching outside the community for help. But calling 988 is confidential. And so I encourage people if you're struggling, by all means, please call 988 to be connected with someone who can help you. And you don't, you don't have to be in a suicidal crisis to call. If you need someone to talk to, by all means, call 988. I'd like to thank both of our guests, Vic Armstrong and Gabby Vargas. Thank you again. Let's continue to keep this conversation going. Today, we are talking away the dark. I want to thank you both for being here. Thank you for having us. Our thanks to Liz Hernandez, the AFSP's Vic Armstrong and Gabby Vargas for their time and dedication to better mental health. To find out more about Talk Away the Dark, please visit AFSP.org. And if you or someone you know is in crisis, please call or text 988. For the full show and more stories like this, download the I'm Listening podcast on the Odyssey app or visit iamlistening.org.
In this edition of In Depth, Audacy’s Liz Hernandez from 94.7 The Wave in Los Angeles spoke with American Foundation for Suicide Prevention expert Vic Armstrong about mental health and suicide prevention in the Hispanic community.