Eber Orellana
English composition
How discrimination From the Latino/hispanic community affect the mental health of the member of the LGBTQ community.
Being part of the LGBTQ community is something that makes me happy, but it comes with a lot of negative aspects, like discrimination, homophobia, rejection, and the feeling of not feeling well in your own home because they think you’re “weird”. Being judged and labeled in many ways makes me or many other people break inside like a “crystal doll”. Mental health is something important, but in the Latino/Hispanic community, it is something that does not exist for them, they do not care about psychological things like “depression” and “anxiety”. What is mental health? How does it affect the LGBTQ community? . Mental health is an important term in psychology, but one that many people ignore and this is the purpose of this research to better understand the mental health of people from the LGBTQ community. This may have been started by religion or because people do not accept that other people dare to go outside the heterosexual norms. The effects of homophobia in Latin America are usually presented in verbal and physical aggression, affecting the mental health of people due to the attack of psychological actions of discriminatory comments. In this Essay, I will argue the aspects of how Latinos are more prone to rejection and discrimination of this community and affect their mental health.
Why is mental health important? Why doesn’t Latin America care about mental health?. Mental illness is seen as a sign of weakness by some Latinos. Others believe it should be kept quiet because it is a private matter. Others worry about being called “loco,” which is Spanish for “crazy.” The reason that Latinos don’t seek treatment for mental health problems is due to a number of factors, including the stigma associated with mental illness and economic, linguistic, and religious barriers. Talking about mental health issues is frequently considered taboo upon in Latin American communities and cultures. This indicates that discussions about this subject are often insufficient among parents, kids, and teachers. Additionally, some people might think it is improper to talk about family matters away from the house. Hispanic/Latinx people tend to be very private and may not want to publicly discuss problems in their homes or personal lives. Talking about mental health may be considered taboo, which can feed the cycle of stigma in the community. These thoughts about how Latinos don’t believe in mental health can lead them to hurt others because they think it’s not a big deal but the comments hurt people’s mental health, but it affects people from the LGBTQ community more because Latino In America, homophobia is higher and the rejection of their sexual orientation is stronger.
As we know in Latin America they do not talk about sexual orientation nor do they transmit education about it in schools, in Latin America they reject and discriminate against people from the lgbtq community because of the part related to “religion” or because they do not see our community as normal people. Speaking from experience, part of my life was like this, discrimination and rejection by many people even by my own family, as I mentioned, this is not talked about or educated, at a very early age I was labeled as “gay” without knowing the meaning myself . I was discriminated against for something that I didn’t even know what it was, I had to educate myself through the internet and YouTube, I saw many positive and other negative aspects, my mental health was damaged at a very early age but even so I didn’t let myself be defeated by that. These psychological aspects are not taken seriously in Latin America, something like depression or anxiety are not well known but they really exist. This is not related to the LGBTQ community but on Facebook I have seen many posts from many people who have committed suicide at young and old ages, due to bullying or family and social pressure. This is becoming very common in my country, which is Honduras, and that is why I think they should take mental health more seriously.
Starting to delve a little deeper into this topic for our research we are going to investigate the effects of discrimination and the rejection of Latinos towards LGBTQ people. As we know through psychology, people’s comments also harm people, but it affects LGBTQ people more, not only because of the comments, this can also be seen as microaggression and was also reflected in physical damage by many people. In Latin America there are not many rights for LGBTQ people, they are not defended from homophobia or physical aggression and they are seen as perpetrators because they do not have sufficient rights to have justice. In Mexico it was recently declared that now LGBTQ people can get married, before this did not exist, also at the same time people from the churches attended protesting because they did not agree with this law, after announcing that this law would be valid from that moment , the people of the churches began to “cry” as if it was something terrible, when I saw that I only felt happy because there are more rights for LGBTQ people but I felt disgusted by how the religious people reacted as if we were perverse and bad people.
An investigation that was published in Sage Journals, focuses on violence and discrimination against lGBTQ people in Latin America. They show the process and the results of the participants, such as psychological aggression, physical assault, sexual coercion assault injury. The investigation of this article shows how the people of the LGBTQ community are affected in their mental health, or first, it talks about the victimization of IPV (intimate partner violence) of how people are victims of aggression by couples, it is shown in physical aggression and psychological, and this is created by heterosexism. Although the majority of research on intimate partner violence (IPV) focuses on heterosexual and cisgender people, academics have recently started to investigate IPV in LGBT groups. It discusses how the IPV rates of the LGBTQ community and heterosexual people compare, highlighting how the incidence of IPV among LGBTQ persons is higher than that among heterosexual people. Experiences of discrimination were linked to both the perpetration and the victims of physical, psychological, and sexual coercion. This backs up the research that has already been done on the possible effects of minority stress on LGBT people’s romantic relationships. The fact that IPV against LGBT individuals is frequently mutual and that all forms of IPV perpetration and victimization have favorable correlations with one another supports earlier research findings. These findings demonstrate how common different sorts of IPV are against LGBT persons in Latin America. The findings also demonstrate that prejudice experiences vary according to the degree and nature of IPV and are connected to IPV perpetration and victimhood. Given that many LGBT persons report suffering discrimination, which seems to be linked to specific IPV episodes, this study emphasizes the need to overcome heterosexist prejudice.
As I discussed the aspects of how Latinos are more prone to rejection and discrimination from this community and affect their mental health. Through all the aspects that we have discussed in this essay, how the mental health of people in the LGBTQ community is affected by discrimination and prejudice in Latin America. LGBTQ people are more likely to experience discrimination by different people whether they are friends, family or strangers, leading LGBTQ people to develop anxiety and psychological damage. The prejudices and the use of the “religion” of Latin America lead to the rejection of something that they think is not right, but these people fear the unknown, something they do not know or understand, as I said before, we do not want them to understand, we want to be accepted as we are and that we no longer experience discrimination in order to recover our mental health.
Citation Page:
Swan, L. E. T., Henry, R. S., Smith, E. R., Aguayo Arelis, A., Rabago Barajas, B. V., & Perrin, P. B. (2021). Discrimination and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization and Perpetration Among a Convenience Sample of LGBT Individuals in Latin America. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(15–16), NP8520–NP8537. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0886260519844774?casa_token=sWOZPXkbyKgAAAAA%3Ai1gTScfdZj2T9ELUGOH4227urOyCMQCvLz9ga2yWuBf9y36n7EGQxrf7gppc3jcsXiPfvvPxIg92
