Angela Soto Cerros draws from their own mental health journey to empower other youth.

Angela Soto Cerros was in the fifth grade when they felt depression take over their life. They reached out to family for help, but they say coming from a Hispanic background the topic was taboo – Soto Cerros (who uses they/them pronouns) was met with denial and stigma. They were left to struggle with depression alone.

Amazingly, Soto Cerros navigated their way to find support from friends and help from online sources. Now at age 22, they’re doing well with therapy and medication. They graduated from CSU Monterey Bay with a psychology degree, and they’re working at The Epicenter in Salinas, a nonprofit focused on serving youth, as an LGBTQ+ services student worker.

In 2022 Soto Cerros was asked to participate with a diverse group of 400 young people from across the state to help the California Department of Public Health’s Office of Suicide Prevention create a campaign to prevent suicide among teens and young adults. (Suicide was the second leading cause of death among youth aged 10-25 years in California between 2018-2022, according to CDPH.)

The resulting campaign that was created and launched on March 27 is called Never a Bother – telling youth they’re not being a bother by asking for help. The campaign includes a website, social media channels, advertising and collaboration with youth-serving community-based organizations. The website includes information for those who care about a youth who is struggling, either friends or adults.

Soto Cerros serves on the campaign’s six-member Youth Advisory Board, with hopes of reaching more youth and those who care about them.

Weekly: What was it like to be in fifth grade and not being able to get help from your family?

Soto Cerros: At the time I knew there was something wrong, but I didn’t have the language and talking to my family about mental health was nonexistent. It was like [talking about] unicorns. It was really difficult to even find the words to describe what was going on.

I noticed there was a lot of trauma, PTSD and mental illness in my family, whether it’s eating disorders or dysmorphia, or just basic depression to anxiety. But talking about it was very taboo. They will either wipe it off or say, “Be quiet, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” So you can imagine how that was for my mental health. I had to be really persistent and say, “Hey, this is a problem. Just because you told me to be quiet doesn’t mean it’s gone.”

You were just a kid – how did you find help?

Honestly, at the time I only had the internet. Obviously there are a lot of types of people on the internet, but there are also people who are dedicated to helping others and mental health. [I would watch] people’s testimonies and their experiences and that actually really helped.

It wasn’t until I actually came across [The Epicenter], and that’s where I learned more about mental health and really, truly learning about what does it mean to take care of your mental health? What does it look like? How can you tailor it to your own experiences and then be surrounded by people who share the same belief that mental health is not something that’s your fault?

What’s involved in being part of the Youth Advisory Board for the Never a Bother campaign?

We meet once a month, talking about what we want to see, reviewing past materials – what we like, what we don’t like and what we think can make it more approachable and friendly, less intimidating. Some of the old material we would see was what older people thought young people would want.

Give me an example of something of materials designed by older people for youth suicide prevention.

They create social media posts, but it looks very corporate. And using website formats that weren’t mobile-friendly – or just friendly.

Where is your family now with attitudes toward mental health issues?

My mom has come a long way. We’re very proud of her. I think with me vocalizing my struggles, her seeing me go to therapy, get medication and just seeing how that change has drastically improved my life – it’s actually encouraged her to go do the same thing. That’s wonderful because I know she’s going to notice the difference immediately. She deserves that.

NEVER A BOTHER can be found at neverabother.org, instagram.com/neverabother, @neverabother on TikTok, and @NeveraBotherCampaign on YouTube.