(people chattering) ("The Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss) (Ruth speaks Spanish) - In my household, when I was back in Honduras growing up, I never heard the word depression.

I was going through a lot.

I was pregnant.

Missing my home country, my house, my grandma, who was the one who raised me.

Nobody talk about depression in the Latino houses.

You have to be tough.

No matter the situation you're going through, you don't show weakness.

It's really hard when you're in this country and you're not legal.

So how can you go to a mental treatment if you don't have insurance?

Me being 16, not knowing a lot of things about this country, it was kinda harsh.

(siren wailing) - Mental health is an state of wellbeing that allow people to cope with the stresses of life.

However, some groups are more affected or disproportionately affected, such as the migrants, particularly the undocumented migrants.

- One of the main problems with the undocumented Latino community is the lack of services of all kinds, but mostly health services.

- When you're undocumented, you are living in this country and have a level of barrier, systemic barriers that make your daily living harder.

- I was raised by my grandma 'cause my mom have to immigrate to the United States when I was 18 months old.

My dad, is out of the picture.

My grandma said, "Your mom is in the United States.

She have to work so she can send you money so you can have everything you need here."

I was always grateful for that, having the material part, but in that loving part, yeah, that was missing.

I was 15, I had sex for the first time and that's when I got pregnant.

I didn't know I was pregnant until I was two months along.

So my grandma felt like she betrayed my mom's trust because she was supposed to be care of me.

(Andrea speaks Spanish) - My mom, she was like, I don't think it's gonna be a good idea if you stay there, but it's up to you if you wanna come to the US.

And I didn't think it twice and I say yes.

I don't know how she make it happen, but she raised the money and she sent for me.

I was really mad at the same time, because I was like, how come she never sent for me before?

Now that I made a mistake, now she sending for me.

It didn't pass like two days when she is like, "On Sunday you're gonna come to Guatemala where somebody's gonna pick you up."

So my grandma have to bring me to Guatemala.

If she asked me so many times, "Are you sure you wanna go?"

That was the hardest moment, and I'm like, "Yeah.

I took the decision so I'm going."

(Ruth speaks in foreign language) The only thing that I was scared is when we crossed the river, because you see in the news everything they say.

(person speaks in foreign language) - [Person] Locals have captured images of people struggling for their lives.

- When we crossed the river, the Rio wasn't that deep.

On the other side we had to walk fast because it's (speaks Spanish), but then passing the street were a pickup truck waiting for us.

And then when I was in Texas, that was it.

When you come to this country, you are full of emotions.

You're leaving behind your family.

You are leaving behind who you were.

- Bye!

- Gracias.

- So with Ruth and really with any immigrant, they have entire lives before they came to United States and were immigrants.

So if you imagine that she never immigrated, there's gonna be things from her childhood and her adolescence that impact who she is in the present moment.

She came to this new country with new systems that she had to figure out and then on top of that, build a new relationship with someone that is technically a stranger to her.

(Ruth speaks Spanish) - [Ruth] I remember when we came to her house, she was staring me basically the whole night.

(Yolanda speaks Spanish) - [Ruth] It was like seeing a person that you picture in your mind for so long that you finally get to see it in reality.

(Yolanda speaks Spanish) - She's becoming a mother.

It really comes back to down to survival.

So a lot of the ways that she sought to cope, we see the manifestations of needing some support in her mental health.

- [Ruth] During my pregnancy, I was living with my mom.

I was okay with her.

We went together to work and clean houses, but then after I gave birth, things changed.

- It can be a shock for the child or the teenager that comes to a new country in a new culture and encounters a new family unit or new family members they don't know.

- [Ruth] I was living in my mom's house and I do have two siblings.

I have my sister and a brother, but they were born in this country, and after I had my baby, it was us four, my siblings, me and my baby, the crib, the only persons that were having privacy basically was my mom.

And back in my country I have my own privacy, and you don't realize all those little details until you come to this country.

Basically, I was living a nightmare.

It's called postpartum depression.

Many moms deal with it differently.

Some moms becomes really protective with the kids.

Other ones not too much.

Other ones just don't care about what's going on around them.

I was going through a lot, but I didn't say anything.

I was those type of teenagers that rebelled like differently.

So I was sneaking out of the house, even though I had a kid, I just left my child in the crib with a bottle just in case she wake up, she just grab it and drink it, until one day my mom find out, "Why you come late?"

and she start hitting me.

(Yolanda speaks Spanish) - For me getting hit when I have never gotten hit by my grandma, I was like, you're the reason why I do what I do.

This is something kind of private.

I was molested by one of my uncles.

I was four and he was a teenager.

He always waited for my grandma to go to sleep.

All this happened for almost a year, so I never knew what exactly was done to me until I learned it in school.

I did try to suicide myself when I was like maybe 13.

I didn't talk at all.

I always felt like I didn't have any value, because that's what they teach you in church.

You have to be a virgin to marriage, and I'm like, I'm not virgin, so who's gonna want to marry me now?

So I'm like, I'm not working no more.

I feel like you are the reason why I feel like this, because you were not there to protect me when I was in Honduras.

(Yolanda speaks Spanish) - After saying that to her, I was like, I don't feel like things are gonna get better with her, so I cannot move out.

Me as 16 how I did it, I just know I did.

I had a fake ID, so people will ask my age, how fake my age.

I had a kid, so it's no way, people won't believe me.

I decided to get a job and then have my own place to live.

In Norwalk, there is a lot of Latinos.

It's easier to navigate here.

So you ask more people about things in your language.

So I didn't speak English basically.

I knew words, but I didn't speak fluently.

I drop out of high school in order for me to pay rent, pay bills and provide to my daughter, I had to work two jobs because I wasn't getting paid enough.

I was undocumented.

So if you go to work, you're gonna be paid in cash, but you're not gonna get paid there.

- So Ruth's undocumented status in those instances was exacerbating an already challenging situation for someone who was a young parent, was in a new country and now has to deal with the barriers of what it means to be undocumented.

- I was hiding from my mom, so I was kind of stressed out.

(Yolanda speaks Spanish) - I was drinking.

That's how I was dealing with postpartum depression.

With depression from before coming to the US, so it was feeling good in the moment, but then the next day I felt guilt.

I left my child.

What if this happened?

(Ruth speaks Spanish) (Yolanda speaks Spanish) - We went through the process of her taking my daughter for a while, which created more sadness inside me.

She brought the social worker, they put her as the legal guardian temporarily.

But that's the thing, I didn't speak English at all.

Reading and understanding documents, that's a different level, especially when it had to do with legal papers and legal guardianship.

So it was total mess.

I became more depressed after what my mom did.

(Yolanda speaks Spanish) - What's the point of fighting, working, doing things, like I don't understand why I have to go through this, especially if I came here to have a new start.

But I knew I want my kid like, she was basically the reason why I try so hard to be steady and calm.

Even though I felt sad, she'll make these weird faces that make me laugh at the end of the day.

So not having her was like the last straw, which led me to go through the trouble trying to take my own life.

(somber music) (sirens wailing) They have to pump my stomach in the hospital.

I was in a suicide watch.

I was feeling all this emptiness.

Why did I came to this country?

I still felt like I didn't wanna live.

(Yolanda speaks Spanish) - I think one of the dangers is that it's very easy to overlook it, because we see high functioning kids.

That doesn't mean that they're not struggling.

We might have all this invisible wounds, all this invisible pain that is there, and that eventually will have a toll in their mental and their physical health.

- They offered me therapies.

That's when they asked me if I had insurance.

No, I don't have insurance.

- So in the case of Ruth, we have someone who is pretty resourceful already.

Even at 16 she was pretty vocal in wanting those resources and thinking, "Okay, well I'm gonna do everything that I can to find them even if it's hard, even if I don't have insurance."

- A few months after, when I had a follow up in the clinic, I told one of the nurses how I was feeling and she's like, "Oh, but there is free counseling in the clinic.

You can also start taking therapies in the clinic at low cost."

- There are places like Connecticut where even if you're a child with undocumented status, you have access to state healthcare, if you're a pregnant mom as well.

Those are things that have come with time, but have not always been in place, which therefore means that for many, many years there's the cumulative experience of the immigrant community not getting the care they need.

- When I was going through the depression and the therapies, they also prescribe me medicine.

They make me go through this paperwork where I can get those medicine with discount.

- At first, we can say, "Oh, the Latino community hide depression," or "they are anti-medication," and I think that's too broad a statement.

They have valid experiences of times when we put trust in doctors and it often that trust is taken advantage of.

- At first, my family were skeptical and they were like, "You're gonna get addictive to the medicine, but you shouldn't be ashamed about it."

If I wanna get better, I have to think about me.

Later I move in with my boyfriend, which is my husband now home, Jomer.

I'll go work with him, painting houses, cleaning houses, whatever I could do to earn cash.

I got pregnant with my second child.

When I had Andrea, it was a little bit more smooth because I had the help from my partner.

He has been a really great dad.

He woke up in the middle of the night, helped me change diapers.

We go out, walk to the park and those little things help.

(Jomer speaks Spanish) - I remember he always be pushing me, "Go back to school, finish school."

Things change for the better.

Then I got my daughter back.

♪ I love you, you love me ♪ ♪ We are happy family ♪ I think it was days or weeks before Christmas, so for me it was the best Christmas ever.

They were my source of energy.

(Ruth speaks Spanish) (Andrea speaks Spanish) (Ruth speaks Spanish) One of the things that I tried was get myself educated.

I remember I signed up for high school, but then I got pregnant with my son, Joshua.

(Ruth speaks Spanish) And then I got pregnant with Isis, my last child.

So I was on birth control in every single pregnancy.

I became a mom of four through failing those birth controls.

I don't regret my kids, even though I was really young, I was a teenage.

We made a decision, made me to get a part-time job.

I tried, but we couldn't, because then whatever I earned, since I didn't have a social security or papers, it's not enough.

You'll end up paying more babysitter than earning a wage.

- You know, there's a lot of experience with chronic stress because of poverty, inequity and educational access, health disparities.

And so what does it mean to come to this new country and raise children when you've had so much chronic stress, not just in your own life, but you're coming from generations of chronic stress?

(group speaks Spanish) - When I was pregnant with my last child, my husband was deported to Honduras, so I have to go to the struggle of being separated from him.

I got a call from him saying, "I got arrested," and I'm like, "Why?"

And he's like, "Because I went through this Mary Parkway with the truck and the truck is commercial, and they asked me for my license."

And of course we as an immigrant, we drive without a driver license.

- Immigrant parents who have this anticipatory threat of family separation, meaning any day I could technically get detained, deported and be separated from my child.

There are a lot of moving parts, but ultimately it's the system of immigration enforcement, immigration policy that puts this level of stress on the parent-child relationship.

Parenting is already hard and then immigration system makes it near impossible to be the ideal parent for their child.

- [Ruth] My kids have to go through the separation.

My oldest daughter went through sadness like he (speaks Spanish).

(Jomer speaks Spanish) - [Ruth] I always told the kids the dad was in Honduras because he have to visit grandma, for work, but I never told them because he was deported back to Honduras.

They never understand the word deportation, and all that triggered back to my depression.

I don't want my kids to feel the way I feel.

I didn't know how to handle it, because I stopped my therapies and I wasn't on medications no more.

- [Person] Are you gonna say anything else?

- From the moment she was born, Ruth had to figure out, "Okay, how do I survive without this person that I'm supposed to be relying on?"

And then it just accumulated and accumulated and accumulated and across all of those experiences, Ruth had no choice but to be resilient if she wanted to live.

(Ruth speaks Spanish) He was back in Honduras for like about six months.

I had to go through friends and family to ask for money so I can send for him.

I have to go back to the things that makes me feel better, which is therapies, find help.

How can we do therapies as a family?

Because I feel like the kids needed it.

I needed it.

And I knew how to cope with my feelings, but I never learned how to cope with my kids' feelings.

(Ruth speaks Spanish) No, I'm doing this wrong again.

That's when Sarah start coming to the house.

- [Narrator] A pair of child first counselors visited Ruth's family for about two years.

- I felt connected with her because I will talk to Sarah in Spanish.

- So I met her when her children were all pretty young.

The youngest was, I remember walking into her house and she was being potty trained, so she was just running around in her diaper.

- [Narrator] A care coordinator found Ruth a Spanish-speaking therapist who helped diagnose Ruth and get her on medication.

She also helped Ruth obtain a driver's license and enrolled her kids in preschool.

- When we think about the parent-child dyad, that parent, the mom or the dad or whoever the primary caregiver is, maybe doing everything in their power to be providing very secure attachment to their child, is always there, is listening to them, is supporting them, and the child feels that.

And so what happens when the parent and the child are doing everything they have to do to have this secure attachment for survival, but then external, in this case, immigration policy, immigration enforcement is basically cramping their ability to continue that secure attachment.

- [Narrator] The kids did activities to help them learn how to cooperate more and fight less and how to better manage their emotions.

This family of six is living on about $30,000 a year, still near the federal poverty line and they still rely on food stamps and Medicaid.

But Ruth says she's more equipped now to handle whatever comes their way.

- When I was through my therapy with Sarah, I did my high school diploma.

That's when I started working with my husband, painting or doing cleaning houses and going to high school at night.

So instead of taking three years in high school, at night, took me 18 months.

(Ruth speaks Spanish) They were so impressed that they actually asked me to keep the speech in graduation.

- [Announcer] Ruth Fajardo.

- Sarah asked me about my legal status and then she's like, "Are you aware about this program, about DACA?"

- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which has protected hundreds of thousands of individuals, also known as Dreamers.

They were brought to the US by their parents illegally, when they were children.

- I was actually helping run free DACA clinics where people could come and have lawyers, help them fill out the paperwork, because it was a pretty complicated application.

- You have to be 15 and under when you came to the US.

I was like a month away from the qualification.

So if I came to the US the following year, I wouldn't be able to qualify.

It's a little scary, because you're giving your whole information, so what if you don't qualify?

They have all the information they need to go arrest you and send you back to your country.

- [Sarah] That's always been a very realistic fear.

And back then it was a time where the administration was undocumented-friendly, relatively speaking.

- It was like a lot of process, but at the end of the day, it was worth it, because I was able to get a work permit, my social security number that I can work and use to be legally in the country.

So when I got my DACA, I applied at Norwalk Community College for a associate degree in accounting.

I graduated in 2021, I think, from NCC.

When I was little, I always imagine myself holding a diploma from the college, say, yeah, I did it.

Now Michelle, my oldest, she's in college right now.

After I graduated, I opened up a deli with a friend, but then COVID hit, and we have to close down the business.

I was at home applying for jobs.

That's when I got hired at Amazon.

At first, I was like what they call a tier one.

Now I'm working as a manager assistant, which is a tier three, and trying to move up as a manager too.

So that's the difference now working with something legal.

Now with my company, I get health insurance.

So even if I, right now I'm not in any therapy, but I know if I want to, I can get it through my health insurance or through my company.

With my mom, we try to be more close nowadays, but it took us a few years after our bad situation to settle down.

(Yolanda speaks Spanish) - My grandma, I miss her a lot, and she always tell me that she misses me a lot too.

I haven't seen her in person since 2004.

But we talk on the phone nowadays with the technology.

(Ruth speaks Spanish) (Andrea speaks Spanish) - [Ruth] I try to get her visa like in 2019 and they denied her.

So, I'm waiting to see if I tried again so that way, since I cannot go over there, at least she can come here.

- [Sarah] She's just grown tremendously in her confidence.

Now she knows that she has it within her, especially processing her own relationship with her grandmother and her mom.

She's been able to heal and be able to be the mom that she wanted growing up.

It's been just wonderful to see her strengths really shine across time.

- Who are these people?

The media sometimes doesn't help.

We forget that there are people and that they are a fundamental part of the American society.

- See, in the United States, the majority of the basic elements of the society are being rebuilt by the migrants.

We need legislation at the local and national level to support mental health, but also of the needs of these specific vulnerable groups.

- They're putting the onus on the individual to fight through all of this oppression and stress that the outside is putting on them.

Instead of thinking, "Oh, why are we not thinking about the systems instead and expecting the individuals to just push through."

- It's fundamental to have trauma-informed systems, the legal system or the immigration system, the education system, the medical system to better understand the nature of trauma, the implications of trauma, and therefore to find sustainable solutions that are can be integrated in the systems.

- [Ruth] Find your inner source of strength.

My kids are my strength.

My husband, it's my backup.

My family is my anchor.

In my case was breaking the cycle of how I was living, how my life was.

My fire to keep the strength was making sure my kids don't go through the same pattern in life I went through.

- [Person] This is Ruth playing basketball and we're gonna see how... Oh, she misses.

- [Ruth] You tired.

You don't have documents.

You don't have the resources.

It's not easy.

But it's not impossible.

When you suffer depression, you're gonna have your happy days, your sad days, but at least you know how to cope yourself.

So you'll find a way.

Go back to the good days again.

(soft music) (soft music continues)