OBESTITY AND HUNGER EXISTENCE

OBESTITY AND HUNGER EXISTENCE

Within a globe past balance, where obesity and hunger exist alongside each other, this contrast has desensitized the world to the desires of its most helpless citizens. Precisely, this is the situation in the warning Latina teens’ rates of suicides plus suicide contemplation. Suicide has turned out to be the number two leading source of death amongst Latina youths in New York (Comunilife, 2019). Indeed, Latina teens report the highest rates of suicide attempts across the country; the outbreak is pronounced (Reichard). The US CDC, in 2017, states that 15.1 percent of Latina teens within the U.S attempted to commit suicide more than once (Comunilife, 2019). Within New York City (NYC), the percentage ranges from 10 to 16 in areas such as Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island, and Queens (Comunilife, 2019). Note that Latina teens attempt taking their lives at far higher rates (13.1 percent) compared to non-Hispanic teens (9.3 percent), White teens (9.8 percent), and black teens (10.2 percent) in NYC (Comunilife, 2019). The phenomenon has been documented from the 1990s and has dramatically increased since the early 20th century (YRBSS, 2019). In 2015, almost 26 percent of Latina adolescents thought of suicide. Other regions with the highest rate of suicide

attempts of Latina teens (above 20 percent) include Idaho, Hawaii, Montana, Maine, and Wyoming (Marcos & Carl, 2017). Importantly, across all genders of Latino high-school scholars, 35.3 percent reported feeling hopeless or sad, in comparison with 25.2 percent and 28.6 percent of black and white high school students (Marcos & Carl, 2017). Besides, the Latino students recorded the highest percentage of students who seriously thought of suicide and those who tried to commit suicide compared to other black and white students. Females are known to attempt taking their lives three times higher than males. Within NYC, approximately 6 percent of grown-ups report clinically considerable emotional distress where highest rates are observed amongst women, individuals enduring chronic illnesses, and those with low salaries. This paper aims to discuss depression amongst teenage Latina girls within New York while analyzing dynamics affecting the issue and developing a strategy to resolve this issue.

Dynamics

An invasive sadness and feeling of hopelessness motivate the elevated suicide rates. The concept of ethnicity, migration, and race suggest key differences within culture and surrounding, resulting in inequalities in various sectors (Bhopal & Sheikh, 2009). The majority of these teenage girls are immigrants or even U.S. born kids of immigrants. These are living in societies that have less supporting methods to incorporate new Americans as well as their families within American society’s complexities. Considerable health disparities can be observed amongst demographic youth subgroups classified by race, sex, and school grade, particularity amid sexual minority and sexual majority teens (Kann et al., 2018). Health disparities may be understood as drawbacks within the health-related to an individual’s racial, social, physical, or economic environment (Beck et al., 2017). Mostly, these originate during childhood and continue throughout one’s life course. In addition to being vulnerable to various risk factors challenging every teenage girl, the Latino adolescent girls have exclusive risk factors. For instance, these teenagers face elevated poverty rates. Poverty brings in many risk factors, such as living within deprived neighborhoods, staying within regions with increased drug abuse and crime rates, poor housing, and education as well as increased teenage pregnancy. An individual’s neighborhood can influence or drive these suicide rate disparities. One’s neighborhood may be a place that holds risks triggering the exacerbation. Besides, the disadvantage concentration significantly affects and influences variations for health results throughout the life path. Illnesses such as hypertension, asthma, low birth-weight, depression, and diabetes are just but a few examples that may result. Such patterns are driven by social health determinants, which are necessarily the conditions within which individuals are given birth, raised, live, work, and age along with the broader series of systems and forces shaping the daily life conditions.

Some individuals excessively experience morbidity; these are mostly individuals living within regions disproportionately affected with risks connected associated with health social determinants. These factors influence an individual’s long-term health; patients become sick constantly with the origin of this morbidity being unresolved. Latino teenager copes with a vast number of difficulties, counting deprived socioeconomic resources, the possibility for behavioral issues (such as early pregnancy and drug use), as well as low educational success. Significant anxiety and depression disorders are among the critical widespread mental well-being conditions influencing Latino teenagers. Both U.S-born and foreign-born Latino teens experience acculturative stress that arises from challenges linked to adapting to living within the US. These challenges comprise of learning a different language, experiencing discrimination, and adjusting to different family dynamics and social norms, thus influencing psychological well-being.

Distinctively, as Latina teenagers try to establish a feeling of autonomy, the move towards it takes place within a cultural framework that stresses on well-built alliance and responsibilities to the relatives, commonly known as feminism cultural value. Such orientation shows more significant concern on family harmony and respect to elders and parents while placing duties to the relatives before individual obligations. The pull towards the link to the family plus its cultural customs along with the teens’ needs counter-pull for raised autonomy may cause family tension and psychological conflict. The susceptibility for suicidal thoughts amongst Latino teenagers increases when such tension occurs within a family setting with depleted parental warmth, cohesiveness, communication, support, empathy, among other social stressors. Undeniably, the acculturative stresses have a positive association with various internalizing behaviors, such as reduced self-esteem, depression symptoms, plus increased suicidal alienation.

Intervention Program

Life is Precious (LIP) is a Comunilife initiative that offers linguistically and culturally suitable help for Latino adolescents enduring depression and those who have really attempted or considered suicide together with their families (Comunilife, 2019). The program is designed to resolve the risk factors affecting Latinas through the provision of inclusive services for psychological health treatment, family support, school support, plus other living skills. Girls acquire essential services within a single location, without division that arise from numerous services providers. LIP welcomes all Latino teens between 12-18 years old. The program offers non-clinical tricks that handle risk factors leading to suicide ideation. Such activities include educational support, wellness activities, family services, as well as innovative art therapies. Since its establishment, LIP has served many teens and their families, and it keeps expanding to further regions. While the suicide epidemic keeps escalating among Latino teens countrywide, LIP aims to rescue lives by offering the adolescents alongside their families, the gear they require to conquer suicide ideation plus dangerous behavior. LIP is an innovative, bold, and effectual initiative with resources to rescue lives from depression and potential suicide attempts. It functions under ‘my house is your house’ philosophy, providing a place where Latino girls, together with their families, get to feel welcomed and understood. Girls are living in poor regions, earning a low income, and those experiencing sexual or physical abuse report higher suicidal behavior risk. Most of them report struggling mentally and encounter conflicts within the home owing to the diverse acculturation levels amid themselves and relatives.

Latino girls in need are passed on to the LIP mainly from psychological health therapists but also get referrals from different health care providers, schools, clinic emergency departments, as well as other social organizations: other times, girls self-refer as per their information on LIP within the society. The program runs in Brooklyn and Bronx, functioning as an after-school plan. About eight-ten girls are present every day, with roughly 47 being engaged with Bronx spot and 20 with the Brooklyn site anytime. Notably, about four girls enroll in the program monthly. These small sets allow staff to provide individual consideration to every girl, while allowing for minor group workshops, such as, during music and art therapy. These girls are never sent away from the LIP program and could retain connections to the program following graduation or, if not, age out of the program.

LIP provides many services, counting ensuring psychological health treatment, help with family relationships and school performances, a chance to take part in music and art therapy, as well as healthy living plans. A significant aspect is assistance with academic accomplishments, whereby girls are needed to first complete their homework after arriving. After that, they get engaged with the activities of the program. LIP program involves tutors from Fordham University; these provide tutoring within every subject in high-school grade. Whenever girls get a chance to join high schools in the City, LIP employees go with them to school fairs as well as open houses, assisting them with the selection process. Similarly, as these girls get ready for college, LIP employees help with the application procedure, counting requesting for application payment waivers.

Further, LIP provides these girls with computers for assignment completion in addition to other school-linked activities. Moreover, LIP provides help in psychological health counseling, music, and art therapy, alongside the healthy living. LIP promotes healthy living through educating on healthy food eating. The girls learn about buying wholesome foods, and within Brooklyn, they cultivate seasonal gardens. They usually prepare dinner, dine, and wash up using a family way prior to heading home. Music and art therapies are offered regularly by qualified councilors. On the other hand, Bronx works hand in hand with a neighboring art museum where the girls participate in a 10-week program every spring, concluding with participant girls’ projects shown during the teen exhibition of the museum. Family activities commonly occur during weekends, and they generally involve daughter-mother activities.

How LIP Aligns with Existing Social Work Values

Social workers observing social justice evaluate their interventions using fairness and equality principles. They pledge to respect the value and dignity of people whom they work with despite their race, social class, or even power access. LIP utilizes such lens to endorse social justice, providing a powerful program for delivering social support among Latino girls enduring depression. The counselors train the participants to recognize the origins of their depression and suicidal thoughts instead of blaming them.

Consequently, the program emphasizes the underlying political, economic, and social systems as specific factors putting the community at risk, causing sadness and hopelessness (Gandelman et al., 2006). Importantly, the LIP program focuses on social inequality as well as poverty as the underlying root source of depression among Latino girls. The LIP workers spot strengths in Latino girls (oppressed and depressed group) and channel their capabilities for empowerment and action. This is usually done through developing family ties and promoting self-esteem, thus minimizing personal bias. The LIP program has various techniques that assist in mitigating suicidal thoughts among Latino girls with depression.

Secondly, LIP promotes approaches and interventions that all together create community and individual capacity, allowing them to leverage resources across systems. The community-centered and human-centered approach encourages participatory management, especially regarding suicide attempts issues. Such community-based intervention generates a higher likelihood of success and equity (Sandel et al., 2016). LIP employs an empowerment approach that involves thinking consciously on cultural context, power relations, plus social action. The strategy helps in building understanding that aims at transforming the girls’ life conditions, both collectively and individually. Empowerment involves collaborating or consulting with different individuals, communities, and groups as a way of enlightening individual’s lives along with social issues (Shaw et al., 2009). Importantly, the approach aims at identifying, creating, or facilitating contexts that isolate and silence certain people who are seen outsiders within various communities, settings, and organizations. Through LIP empowerment, the girls gain understanding and have to say and influence on the decisions affecting their lives. The program helps these girls in adapting as well as responding to environments affecting their practice.