Mood disorders such as anxiety or depression have increased in recent years in the United States, where adolescents, especially Latinas, "are experiencing a mental health crisis" and an increase in suicide attempts, the Crisis Text Line organization warned on Wednesday.
The mental health crisis in young people in the United States is such that, from 2009 to 2019, the cases of high school students who "reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness", pointed out this line of suicide prevention and help in cases of depression and crisis.
Crisis Text Line expressed concern about the rise in suicide attempts among Latina teens and warned that these "attempt suicide more often than any other group of teens" in the United States and this acquires special relevance from the covid-19 pandemic.
"Thanks to the work of our team and the Crisis Counselors, who are bilingual volunteers, we can offer help service to people who feel more comfortable receiving mental health support through text message in Spanish," Dena Trujillo, general manager of Crisis Text Line, told EFE.
The organization has helped this year, with its free advice, more than 17,000 people who "they had a plan to attempt suicide".
"I joined because of the great need in the Latino community for accessible emotional support", as "We live in a time when anxiety is at its highest and many Latinos are not receiving the support they need and deserve."said Anthony Flores, bilingual crisis counselor for Crisis Text Line.
The advice of this organization is done through text messages. The person who is in need of emotional support and is in crisis sends a text with the word HELP to 741741 from anywhere in the United States and at any time.
A Crisis Text Line counselor then receives the message and responds immediately from that online platform in order to "help (the person in crisis) move from a moment of agitation to one of calm"says the organization, which has more than 45,000 crisis counselors.
As for Hispanics affected by these mood disorders, LatinX text messages already represent 17% of the total messages received by Crisis Tex Line.
Messages in english "tend to be from younger people" (56% are 17 years old or younger) and more likely to be female (79%) than all texting combined.
In 2019, 12 million adult Americans seriously considered taking their own lives, of which 3.5 million made a plan and 1.4 million attempted suicide, according to CDC data.
People in the United States who are thinking about suicide can call the National Suicide Prevention Line at 1-800-273-8255, or use the Lifeline chat, both available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. week.
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