By Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou, EGP Staff Writer
Sept 16, 2010
A subject that normally fills people with shame when it doesn’t elicit nervous laughter was warmly received by an unlikely audience last Thursday, a response that was helped by the candor of a basketball champion, a congresswoman, and two students.
Middle-schoolers at Eastmont Intermediate in Montebello, some wearing purple and yellow Laker shirts, were predictably excited to have world basketball champion and Los Angeles Lakers forward Ron Artest speak to them last Thursday. It didn’t seem to matter that he was there to talk about his experiences seeking counseling from psychologists.
“It doesn’t mean you’re crazy,” he told them, addressing the widespread stigma surrounding the subject of mental health. It just means “you have some issues in your life, and you’re a young teen who does not know how to handle it,” he said.
Artest, who is known for publicly thanking his psychologist for helping him with his professional and personal life, is working to raise awareness about mental health, particularly through Congresswoman Grace Napolitano’s Mental Health Act, which would set aside $200 million in federal grants to fund free mental health services at schools.
Students at Eastmont Intermediate in Montebello were thrilled to see one of their heroes speak at a school assembly. (EGP photo by Elizabeth Chou)
Since beginning his career in the NBA, Artest has received counseling to deal with anger management, marriage, and parenting issues. But while it helped him immensely, he admitted, “it was so expensive.”
“How can a kid in East L.A…. get the same help that I’ve gotten without paying so much?” he asked. He says he supports the Mental Health Act because it would ensure that young people would have access to the same kind of help from “professional communicators.”
Sounding like a “big brother,” Artest told his young audience about his experiences dealing with anger and his parents’ separation when he was 13-years-old. He also expressed disappointment and confusion about a friend who got straight A’s in school, but who still decided to sell drugs. About two years into his NBA basketball career, Artest learned his friend was beaten to death with a bat.
Artest shared his experiences with students at Eastmont Intermediate last Thursday. (EGP photo by Elizabeth Chou)
At the urging of his mother, Artest also sought the help of a neighborhood-counseling group to deal with his temper when he was younger. He said learning to communicate “worked” for him, adding that it was only when he kept things inside that things would go badly.
Artest was joined last Thursday by college student Kristina Segura-Baird and high school senior Angelica Porcayo who served as “big sisters” to their middle school audience.
A cheerful sounding Segura-Baird asked the students if they thought she looked normal or crazy. She made them giggle when she told them, “None of us is any less normal than the person sitting next to you, so look around. We’re all the same.”
She said she was initially dead set against getting counseling and felt as if she was the only “teenager that was going to talk to a psychologist.” She couldn’t imagine talking to a “complete stranger about issues I couldn’t even talk to my family and friends about,” she said.
“Feelings and emotions” that she couldn’t understand had consumed her, but counseling helped her put things into perspective. Activities such as writing about herself helped her realize that there were positive things going on in her life as well, she said.
Porcayo meanwhile opened with a question, “Any of the girls here have a boyfriend right now?”
She told her audience that she was pressured and retaliated against by her boyfriend in sixth grade for refusing to have sex with him. “My mentality was not to [have sex]. My mentality was going to school, getting through middle school and off to high school,” she said.
Things were no better in the classroom. Porcayo got a sympathetic response when she asked, “How many of you guys feel that when you’re doing work… you’re trying to do it your way, and the teacher’s telling you to do it her way, when you know you’re doing the right thing… raise your hands.”
Porcayo said she felt that one of her teachers had written her off as someone who would “go out there, get pregnant, do drugs, party, whatever.” When the teacher got fed up with her one day, she told Porcayo, “With that dumbness of yours, you’re not going to get anywhere.”
To this day, those words still run “around and around” in her head. “Teachers sometimes say things that you don’t want to hear, but they say it because they’re upset, they’re mad, at things going on in their life. But… whenever I think about it, it still hurts me,” she said.
Porcayo and Segura-Berg both went through counseling at Pacific Clinics, one of the mental health service providers working with school districts in the area, including the Montebello Unified School District.
Napolitano took on mental health issues in 2001 after learning that one in three Latinas consider suicide. At last Thursday’s event however, Napolitano revealed a more personal connection to the issue of mental health.
“I was molested as a child. So you can understand, it can happen to anybody,” she said.
The Latina Youth Program that Napolitano started in 2001 has expanded to eleven schools: Alvarado Intermediate, Bassett High, Eastmont Intermediate, Lake Center Middle, Los Alisos Middle, Los Nietos Middle, North Park Middle, Wilcox Elementary, Santa Fe High, Montebello High, and Santa Fe Springs Middle.
If approved, the Mental Health Act introduced by Napolitano in 2009 would expand programs like it nationwide. Locally, Montebello Unified has been able to provide mental health services at all 28 of its kindergarten through 12th grade campuses, according to health services director George Muriel.
A combination of school district funds and a federal Safe Schools, Healthy Students grant, which addresses mental health as part of a larger goal of combating school violence, are used to pay for the programs. MUSD has also been able to bring in Medi-Cal dollars for students who qualify.
MUSD ‘s Latina Youth Program is run through Pacific Clinics. A new collaboration with Los Angeles County will allow the school district to expand those types of services to more students through agreements with several local clinics to provide on-campus care. Previously, the district would refer students to those clinics, but sometimes parents or students would not follow through. “What we’re finding is there is a mutual interest, that we’re all servicing the same kids, the same families,” Muriel said.
Muriel says the ideal counselor to student ratio is 250 to 1. The district is currently at around 400 to 1, he says.
“It’s amazing to think… that there’s issues that emerge at a very young age,” Muriel says.
Artest said he wavered about becoming a spokesperson for the Mental Health Act. He has had his share of problems both on and off the courts that he never got the time to work out until he was older. “I’m still not a perfect person. I wish I was, but I’m not,” he said.
And well known for his antics in the public spotlight, Artest thought he would scare away the kids and parents. “No parent wants their kids to be listening to a guy who was on Jimmy Kimmel in his boxers [shorts],” he said.
But finally he said he couldn’t shake off the importance of the issue, “so I put all that aside.”