Pueden encontrar la versión en español aquí.
Clad in a dark brown crew neck and a chain with a ring around his neck, Diego E. P. Aguilar feels self-conscious about his short hair. The 17-year-old is a senior at Ogden High School, where the legal permanent resident has studied since moving from Mexico about a year and a half ago.
There was a period when he withdrew from others and resented some classmates who had been his friends, he said. He thought about quitting as the class treasurer.
He shared his worries with Nata Choi, director of peer support with Latino Behavioral Health Services. The Salt Lake City-based nonprofit works to improve mental health and access to care among Utah’s Latino communities.
“Le hablé explícitamente, el nombre de las personas, lo que había pasado con ellos. Y él me preguntó si habían hecho algo grave, algo que no se puede perdonar,” he said in Spanish.
“I told him point-blank the people’s names, what had happened with them. He asked me if what they’d done was so serious I couldn’t forgive them for it.”
Choi helped him forgive, he said, and understand that resentment wasn’t good for him.
“Nata me ayudó mucho, compartía historias que él tenía, que vivió, te hace sentir como entendido, mucho mejor.”
“Nata helped me a lot,” he said. “He shared personal stories of his that he’d lived. It makes you feel understood a lot better.”
Choi did understand. A master of social work and a certified peer support specialist, he uses not only his professional experience but his familiarity with Latino culture to help students become more comfortable and confident in school.
When Choi moved to Utah from Bolivia in 2007 at 11 years old, he found himself getting in trouble for being too physically affectionate or using words he didn’t understand were inappropriate.
“To have a Latino family in the United States, what it is to have cultures clashing when I have to speak Spanish at home, and then I have to speak English at school, and having to deal with these nuances that only a person that actually went through it would truly understand.”
Peer support specialists from Latino Behavioral Health Services attend classes of immigrant students at Ogden High and Mound Fort Junior High. When the program’s grant funding expired at the end of the 2023-2024 school year, Ogden School District decided to keep them on in exchange for free office space at the former James Madison Elementary, now a community center.
Teachers can refer students for extra support, or students can seek one-on-one meetings on their own. Specialists sometimes meet with families and help them access additional resources. The district is considering expanding the partnership to more schools, according to the nonprofit’s executive director.
Forty-seven percent of students at Ogden High School are Hispanic or Latino, according to fall 2024 enrollment data. District-wide, they graduate at higher rates than their white peers. But at Ogden High, which houses the district’s program for students new to the country, they have graduated at lower rates than their white peers for the past two years.
Amanda Salgado, a multilingual literacy teacher at Ogden High, said mental health has to be a priority.
“Being a teenager in itself is hard enough,” she said, even without coming to a new country and learning a new language. This year, all of her students come from Spanish-speaking countries. Most stay with her for their first two years in the U.S., taking a class in reading and writing and another in speaking and listening.
“[My students] have so many ideas, and they're brilliant, and they're just the most interesting people,” she said. “As a community, we’ll be stronger, the more resources that we can pour into these kids and help them to feel like they belong.”
Salgado said they come to her with issues or for advice, but she’s not a mental health professional.
“I have a classroom full of students that need my attention,” she said, so support from specialists with similar cultural backgrounds is powerful. She said Choi and his colleague Kim Lopez Moreno help students feel they belong and achieve their goals, and her students look forward to having them in class.
Young people are less likely to access mental health services than adults, and young people of color are even less likely to do so, according to Liz Siantz, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Utah.
Hispanic youth are more than 20% less likely to access mental health care than their white peers, according to peer-reviewed studies in the American Journal of Health Behavior and the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Age-appropriate mental health care is limited, and when it is available, stigma or a lack of family support can keep young people from using it, Siantz said. Peer support can normalize the need for mental health services.
“[It can] not only address a specific mental health challenge, but also other life experiences that both the peer and the high school student have experienced or are currently navigating,” she said.
Though research is limited, improving students’ access to care might improve mental health, which could reduce the risk of suicide.
Salgado credits the peer support specialists with helping her students, some of whom arrive nervous, shy or angry at the world, become more confident.
“They are more willing to participate, and they're reaching out more and making friends, and starting to kind of feel like they have a place here,” she said.
Choi agreed. He sees it in their demeanor when he helps students get better at managing their emotions and do better in school. He said they’re connecting with others and opening up. These days, Aguilar is still in student government, thanks in part to conversations he had with Choi.
“Hablé con Nata, me escuchó, me ayudó con los problemas que yo tenía, y ya me hizo otra vez abrirme más a la gente otra vez,” he said.
“I talked with Nata. He listened and helped me with my problems, and he helped me open up to people again,” he said.
That led to him making more friends and improving his English.
For Choi, building relationships is foundational to his work. He recalled one student who turned to him after they’d connected through casual conversations.
“I'm honored to be able to help this student and for them to trust me,” he said, noting teenagers often think adults don’t understand them. “When I can be that adult that does, that’s amazing.”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
