Leveraging a Community-Based Partnership to Support the Mental Health of Latinx Immigrant-Origin Youth

Approximately 25% of all Latinx children in the United States under the age of 18 live in mixed-status families (where one or both parents are undocumented). They grow up not only as members of a marginalized group, but also with the unrelenting threat to their family’s safety posed by possible deportation. The resulting stress manifests as a form of psychological violence to these individuals, which greatly affects their psychosocial well-being. A study of 2,500 Latinx children found that those with undocumented parents exhibited higher levels of anxiety, and depressive symptoms than those with documented or citizen parents. Despite the greater need, youth from mixed-status Latinx families use mental health services at lower rates than any other ethnic-racial group. Contributing factors for this include deportation concerns, low levels of family mental health literacy, limited access to community resources and culturally appropriate services, lack of health insurance, language barriers, and mental health stigma. The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the mental health-related disparities experienced by these youth. This study explores a community’s response to the pressing needs of Latinx immigrant youth through the formation, operation, and evaluation of the Latinx Mental Health Collaborative (LMHC). This collaborative brings together diverse stakeholders to develop a holistic understanding of the community's needs and create targeted programs to address healthcare disparities and improve access to mental health services for Latinx immigrant youth. The LMHC is a community-academic partnership between local university researchers, community members, leaders, agencies, and providers. This partnership includes professionals who engage with the target community as well as community experts with deep lived experience, which together fosters the conditions to learn and collect critical information that has the potential to impact health outcomes at a community level. Interviews with LMHC members (N = 7) were conducted in 2024 with the goal of documenting the emerging impact of the group and to better understand their shared vision and future direction. Results highlighted some of the collaborative’s strengths: “Alone we won't go far, but together we can go very far. We're leveraging collective work to have a bigger impact in servicing the folks in our community. There's no way we could have done what we've done without this collaborative." Participants also shared some challenges: “I feel like if one of us stops coming now, it could fall apart.” Members described the impact of their work as: "providing support to kids who are just off the grid. The vast majority of the kids who participated in this are undocumented.” By developing a better understanding of the process of forming and operating a community-based collaborative to improve the mental health of Latinx immigrant youth, we intend to provide a roadmap for other organizations aiming to develop similar collaboratives in their respective communities. Such collaboration fosters collective learning and facilitates the development of effective strategies to advance health equity and pursue social justice for marginalized communities. LMHC members agree that whatever shape the future direction of the group takes, “it would have to be something for Latinos, by Latinos."