Beyond “Ponte las Pilas”: Rethinking Mental Health in Latino Culture

“Ponte las pilas.” If you grew up in a Latino household, you’ve heard it. Tired? Sad? Stuck? Put your batteries in. Try harder.

It’s said with love... mostly. A push from a tía, a parent, a partner who just wants to see you

back on your feet. Échale ganas. Pull yourself together. Most of the time, it works the way it’s meant to. A small nudge on a hard day.

But what happens when the thing pulling you down isn’t something you can power through?

For depression, low motivation can read as laziness. For grief or anxiety, tears get labeled

unstable. Dramatic. Too much. The message is quiet but clear. What you’re feeling isn’t real,

and if it is, it’s a flaw in you. Over time, that invalidation teaches you to stop bringing it up. You learn to manage in silence. And the next time someone in the family struggles, the silence gets passed down with everything else.

Stigma doesn’t grow in a vacuum. It grows out of one of our culture’s deepest values: family. La familia es todo. Private matters stay within. Seeking help outside the household can feel like a quiet betrayal, as if you’re saying the people who raised you weren’t enough. That value is real, and it’s one of the gifts of this culture, but loyalty has an edge. It can shade into enmeshment, where loving your family means never questioning it, never naming what hurt, never drawing a line. Learning that it's okay to love your family and setting boundaries isn’t betrayal, but it can be difficult to differentiate in a family-centric culture.

Even for those who decide therapy is worth trying, the barriers are real. Language. Insurance and cost. Distrust of institutions that have failed our communities before. The search for a therapist who shares enough of your experience to understand without translation. Although the number of Latinx therapists is growing, it’s still limited.

What’s beginning to change is community. Social media has given us something earlier

generations didn’t have. It lets people find each other across distances. A stranger names

something you carried alone for twenty years, and suddenly you have words for it. From there, community becomes a doorway: to therapists who get it, to practices that honor your values, to the simple realization that you’re not the only one.

Which brings me back to ponte las pilas. The phrase isn’t wrong. It’s just incomplete. Showing up for your mental health is putting your batteries in. Asking for help is échale ganas. Therapy isn’t giving up on the strength your family taught you. It’s pointing that strength somewhere new. You can love your family and still need someone outside it. You can honor where you came from and still build something they didn’t have language for.

By: Stephanie Betancourt (she/her), MSCP, PLPC