If you are reading this, there is a good chance you already know the gravity of the subject we are going to discuss. Maybe you’ve sat in an emergency room for six, eight, or even ten hours, waiting for a psychiatric bed to open up for someone you love. Maybe you’ve watched a family member be discharged too soon because, as the staff put it, “nothing more could be done.” Maybe you are a caregiver somewhere in Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, in Pacoima, in South LA, or in East LA, holding your family together while wondering who is holding you. I know that weight. My name is Angela Padilla, and I founded FundaMental Change because my mother lived with severe bipolar and schizoaffective episodes for most of my childhood. I grew up as a daughter, a caretaker, and eventually an advocate. What I have seen and what the research now confirms is that the pain is not shared equally. For Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Indigenous families across the United States, the impact of systemic racism on mental health within minority families adds a second, often invisible, layer of harm on top of an already broken health care system. This is the pandemic after the pandemic. And we want this to be a conversation, not a lecture. So let’s put our minds together, look at what the research actually says, and talk about what we can do about it, together.
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