My Top 5 Horror Movies as a Latina Mental Health Advocate with Anxiety

(And the System That Makes It All Worse)

I saw this trend and knew I had to do it and I don't normally say that, ha! But it applied so well. The real horror begins when you try to ask for help. Not the kind with jump scares and haunted houses. The kind that shows up in waiting rooms, insurance denials, and someone at Thanksgiving telling you to just pray about it.

This post is for every Latina, every person of color, every low-income community member who has had to fight just to access basic mental health care. I see you. And we're naming what the system would rather keep quiet.

Here are my top 5 real ones; plus some honorable mentions that deserve their own spotlight.

Horror #1: "Have You Tried Just... Fixing It Naturally?"

Someone who has never sat in a therapist's office, never filled a prescription, never had to explain to HR why they need a mental health day (also, NEVER do this — HR is not your friend, nor is your boss; I seldom tell supervisors and I'd recommend you refrain from it too, but that's another story) — telling you to stop taking your medication. Because they read something online. Or because they're "worried about what it does to your body."

This is one of the most common and damaging forms of mental health stigma in Latino communities. It often comes wrapped in love, which makes it harder to push back on. But here's what the research says: psychiatric medications, when properly prescribed and monitored, are evidence-based, life-saving tools.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, untreated mental illness can worsen over time and lead to serious impairment. Stopping medication abruptly without medical guidance can be genuinely dangerous.

If someone in your life is managing their mental health with medication, the most loving thing you can do is trust them and their doctor — not your Google search from 2019 or your TikTok, even if I post this there or on IG, hehe. And with that: this is not medical advice. Please connect with your doctor if you'd like to pursue any form of treatment you see or hear about here or anywhere else that intrigues you.

I will also say this: the first line of treatment before pursuing medication should always be therapy. I never took medication for my anxiety before doing therapy first. If you know me, you know I didn't even seriously consider medication until I was out of my graduate program and even then, it took me a few more years until I was 30 to finally give in. That is another story, tied directly to the stigma of medication in communities of color, and I'll tell it later.

Anyways, let me take my meds. My brain was tired for 30 years, and it has finally quieted down and gotten some peace. It hasn't dimmed my lights. I'm still high functioning  and I'm still me.

Horror #2: Diagnosed but Making It Everyone Else's Problem

This one is nuanced because we are not shaming anyone for having a diagnosis. Living with a mental health condition is HARD.

But there is a real difference between struggling and using your diagnosis as a reason not to do any work. When someone refuses therapy, goes on and off their medication, refuses any form of management of it, and then expects everyone around them to absorb the fallout, that is not okay. That is harm transfer.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) emphasizes that recovery is not linear, but it does require effort and support. Community matters and so does accountability within that community. Getting support for yourself is not a betrayal of anyone. It is how you protect the people you love.

Personally, in the workplace and in life, I have dealt with individuals who went on and off their meds, were diagnosed but didn't pursue therapy or any treatment, and lacked self-awareness — and that directly impacted my safety at times. This chronic stress caused my own anxiety to worsen and, at one point, led to an increase in my own medication dosage just to manage day-to-day. Coping skills can only go so far when the environment itself is the source of harm.

A study published in Frontiers in Public Health found that high-stress workplace environments are significantly associated with the onset and worsening of anxiety and depression. Separately, research on secondary traumatic stress; the psychological impact of prolonged exposure to others' distress or harmful behavior, shows it can produce symptoms including anxiety, sleep disturbances, and emotional exhaustion, even without direct trauma exposure. _[1]

Horror #3: "Just Pray About It"

Faith is powerful. For many Latinas, spirituality is woven into how we understand ourselves, how our families have been brought up, and our healing. We are not here to dismantle that — well, not right now at least, bahaha.

But when prayer is used as a substitute for professional care, especially in communities where mental health stigma runs deep and therapy is seen as "para los locos", it becomes a barrier. It becomes a reason not to seek help that could genuinely change or save a life.

Research published in Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology has consistently documented that Latino communities face unique stigma around mental health help-seeking, shaped by cultural values like familismo and personalismo, as well as distrust of medical systems rooted in historical exclusion. _[2]

And it's not just our community. A landmark study on mental health stigma across Black, Latino, and Asian American communities found that all three groups exhibited stronger mental illness stigma than the general U.S. public including viewing mental illness as less serious, less treatable, and perceiving greater social distance from those who have it. _[3]

In Asian American communities specifically, research shows that mental health is often treated as a taboo topic tied to shame and family honor and that Asian Americans are 50% less likely than other racial groups to seek mental health services. _[4] In Black communities, deep and historically justified distrust of the medical system plays a significant role in treatment avoidance, on top of stigma that frames mental illness as personal weakness. _[5]

You can pray and go to therapy. You can light a candle and take your medication. Faith and mental health care are not opposites. They can coexist. I myself combine multiple practices in my own care because they work for me, and I don't care if you don't like it.

Horror #4: Losing Your Meds on Medi-Cal or VA Coverage — and Being Treated Like a Criminal

You finally have coverage. You finally have a provider. You finally have a prescription that works. And then the formulary changes  and if you don't know what that is, it's basically the list of medications your plan will cover, and it can change with little warning or your plan switches, or there's a prior authorization that takes six weeks, or your pharmacy doesn't have it in stock. Suddenly you're back at zero. Sometimes worse.

For veterans and Medi-Cal patients especially, navigating medication access can feel like punishment. The bureaucratic hoops, the judgment at the pharmacy counter/provider’s office, the assumption that anyone asking for certain medications must be seeking them for the wrong reasons i.e., addiction, abuse, it is dehumanizing.

A 2022 report from the California Health Care Foundation found significant gaps in behavioral health access for Medi-Cal enrollees, with low-income communities of color bearing the greatest burden of those gaps.

And there's documented evidence that communities of color, particularly Black and Latino patients are routinely undertreated and over-scrutinized when it comes to medication. A study published in PNAS found that false beliefs about biological differences between Black and white patients continue to shape pain assessment and treatment decisions. Research from the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed that Black and Hispanic patients consistently receive lower opioid doses than white patients for the same conditions across 90% of health systems studied. _[6] And a study on inpatient psychiatric settings found that Black patients were 58% more likely to receive antipsychotic PRN medications compared to white patients raising serious questions about racial bias in psychiatric treatment decisions. _[7]

Here's something specific that matters: if you lose a controlled substance prescription like an ADHD stimulant such as Adderall or Ritalin, which are Schedule II under California law, you cannot get an emergency refill. Schedule II medications have no refills at all; each one requires a new authorization from your provider. _[8] Non-controlled medications like Prozac are significantly easier to navigate in an emergency. This system, while designed to prevent abuse, disproportionately punishes people who are already struggling to access care and who are disproportionately low-income and people of color.

You are not a criminal for needing medication. You are a human being who deserves dignified care. 

Horror #5: Finding a Bilingual, Culturally Competent Therapist on Medi-Cal…

This is one of the most documented and persistent failures of the mental health system when it comes to communities of color. Bilingual therapists are in critically short supply. Culturally competent care meaning a provider who understands the weight of generational trauma, immigration, code-switching, racism, and family obligation is even rarer.

A landmark study by Vega et al. published in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that despite higher rates of certain mental health stressors, U.S.-born Latinos had limited access to culturally appropriate services and significantly underutilized mental health care.

The Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity identified systemic barriers including language access, workforce diversity, and cultural mistrust as key drivers of health disparities for communities of color.

For Asian American communities, the barriers are just as stark  and often compounded by the model minority myth, which obscures real suffering. Research published in Psychiatric Services found that cost, language barriers, and lack of culturally matched providers are among the most prohibitive barriers to mental health care for Asian Americans. _[4] A review published in PMC found that Asian Americans tend to underreport mental illness, are less likely to participate in mental health studies, and face significant stigma tied to shame and family expectations. _[9]

For Black communities, distrust of the healthcare system rooted in a documented history of medical experimentation, exploitation, and neglect, remains one of the most significant barriers to seeking mental health care. The American Psychiatric Association explicitly names this historical distrust as a driver of disparities. _[5]

For immigrant communities broadly, the fear of documentation status, language barriers, and lack of providers who understand transnational identity and acculturation stress creates layers of obstacles that can feel insurmountable.

Finding a therapist who gets it,  who doesn't make you explain your entire culture before you can even get to what's wrong, should not be a luxury. But right now, for too many of us, it is.

If you're trying to find one, try Latinx Therapy and search their database, I’ve used them before to find a Latinx therapist, I haven't used Therapy for Latinx but they are also a database, BetterHelp gets a bad rap but I ended up finding one when I was in need and couldn’t afford one with insurance and ended up loving my Latina therapist I found. And here are some others on IG that I follow, some Latina, some not, but I follow their content or have worked with some on collabs, so they are worth checking out: Araceli Vidales, Jacqueline Garcia, Lupita Martínez, Carla Avalos, Irene Velasquez, Cyndi Gallego, Jessica Medina, Naomi Tapia, Daisy Gómez, or Psychology Today's therapist finder. Use every filter available — gender, specialty, language, areas of expertise like generational trauma, immigration, and cultural identity. You deserve a provider who is built for you. Note: I am not affiliated or paid by any of these individuals or companies, just sharing resources I've encountered.

Honorable Mentions: The Treatments We Deserve Access To

These didn't make the top 5, but they deserve their own spotlight because the access gap is real, documented, and deeply tied to race and income.

TMS and Ketamine Therapy

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and ketamine-assisted therapy have shown remarkable results for treatment-resistant depression and anxiety conditions that disproportionately affect communities that have faced chronic stress, trauma, and systemic racism.

A 2019 meta-analysis in the Journal of Affective Disorders found TMS to be significantly effective for major depressive disorder. Ketamine has been shown in multiple NIMH-funded studies to produce rapid antidepressant effects, sometimes within hours.

The problem? A single TMS treatment course can cost between $6,000–$12,000. Ketamine infusions run $400–$800 per session. Insurance coverage is inconsistent at best, and Medi-Cal coverage is limited. These treatments exist. They work. And most of our communities will never access them not because we don't need them, but because the system wasn't designed with us in mind. I've been trying to access these through insurance and so far have had no luck, but maybe one day I will  and the dream of those who tell me to get off my meds will finally come true ✨

Acupuncture, Cupping, and Eastern Medicine

For many Latinas, healing has always included practices that Western medicine doesn't fully recognize: sobadas, herbal remedies, prayer and yes, for many of us who've discovered them, acupuncture and cupping.

The National Institutes of Health acknowledges acupuncture as having evidence-based benefits for pain, anxiety, and stress. Research published in JAMA Internal Medicine found acupuncture significantly effective for chronic pain conditions.

Yet most insurance plans, including Medi-Cal, offer little to no coverage for these modalities. The assumption embedded in U.S. healthcare is that only Western, pharmaceutical-based care is "real" medicine. And that assumption has a documented racial and colonial history.

A 2022 article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal examining race and colonialism in medicine found that Indigenous and traditional medicines were historically rejected by Western powers as part of an intentional ideological strategy of assimilation, what they called "civilizing." _[10] A review published in PLOS One further documented that self-determined traditional healing options remain largely excluded from Western healthcare institutions. _[11] This isn't coincidence. It's policy rooted in who gets to define what healing looks like.

Our ancestors knew how to heal. It's time our insurance plans caught up.

The Scariest Part? The System Wasn't Built for Us.

Everything on this list; the stigma, the access barriers, the medication gatekeeping, the shortage of bilingual providers, the dismissal of non-Western medicine is not accidental. It is the result of a healthcare and mental health system that was built without communities of color at the table.

The American Psychological Association's 2017 Multicultural Guidelines explicitly acknowledge the role of racism, historical trauma, and systemic inequity in shaping mental health disparities. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has documented persistent gaps in behavioral health equity for racial and ethnic minority communities for decades.

Knowing this doesn't make it hurt less. But it does mean it's not in your head. It's not weakness. It's not a personal failure. It is a structural one.

And we're here, building community, sharing resources, and refusing to stay quiet because our mental health matters too.

Made with love and your salud mental in mind.

— Educated Chola

If you or someone you know is in crisis, please reach out to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. For Spanish-language support, press 2.

Sources

[1] Guo, Y.F. et al. Secondary traumatic stress: Risk factors, consequences, and coping strategies. Frontiers in Psychology (2023). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10011627/ | Kim, T. et al. Research for association and correlation between stress at workplace and individual mental health. Frontiers in Public Health (2024). https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1439542/full

[2] Ayers, S.L. & Kronenfeld, J.J. Chronic illness and health-seeking information on the Internet. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal. | See also: Organista, K.C. Solving Latino psychosocial and health problems. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley (2007). Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/cdp

[3] Michaels, E.K. et al. Mental Illness Stigma in Black, Latina/o, and Asian Americans. PMC (2025). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12574314/

[4] UCLA Health. Confronting mental health barriers in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community (2023). https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/confronting-mental-health-barriers-asian-american-and-2 | Ye, J. et al. Disparities in Mental Health Care Utilization Among Asian Americans. Psychiatric Services (2020). https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.201900126

[5] American Psychiatric Association. Stigma, Prejudice and Discrimination Against People with Mental Illness. https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/stigma-and-discrimination

[6] Morden, N.E. et al. Racial Inequality in Prescription Opioid Receipt — Role of Individual Health Systems. New England Journal of Medicine (2021). https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa2034159 | Hoffman, K.M. et al. Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations. PNAS (2016). https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1516047113

[7] Ngan, E. et al. Racial disparities with PRN medication usage in inpatient psychiatric treatment. PMC (2024). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11016118/

[8] California Health and Safety Code HSC 11200. Controlled Substance Refill Laws. LegalClarity (2026). https://legalclarity.org/california-controlled-substance-refill-laws/ | Medical Board of California. CURES Prescribing Rules. https://www.mbc.ca.gov/Resources/Medical-Resources/CURES/Prescribing-Rules.aspx

[9] Leung, P. et al. Further Reduction in Help-Seeking Behaviors Amidst Additional Barriers to Mental Health Treatment in Asian Populations. PMC (2020). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7733772/

[10] Kirmayer, L.J. et al. The past, present and future of race and colonialism in medicine. Canadian Medical Association Journal (2022). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9188792/

[11] Rowan, M. et al. Traditional Indigenous medicine in North America: A scoping review. PLOS One (2020). https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0237531