EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Padilla and wife Angela talk LGBTQ mental health
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and his wife, Angela Padilla, spoke with the Washington Blade for an exclusive interview last week ahead of their receipt of Voice Awards from the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles at a ceremony on June 30. “I’ve known members” of the organization “off and on over the years, going back to my days on the city council in Los Angeles,” when battles were waged over California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage, Padilla said. “I was proud to be an ally for a long time, but especially in those moments, really, as a public official, as an elected official, knowing how important allyship was,” he said, stressing “the tremendous talent of the chorus” and “what they represented individually and as a group” serving as allies for “young people who may not necessarily grow up in a supportive environment or in supportive families.” “I work very closely with Joseph Guardarrama,” a board member for GMCLA, “for many years now on my nonprofit, and it’s all in support of mental health and wellness and educating people on how to get help, why they should get help, and why it’s important to take care of your brain,” Mrs.
Padilla said by phone. “I started FundaMental Change in 2017,” she said, to push for “the mental change that I feel that we have to have as a society when it comes to how we look at [and] how we treat mental health conditions.” The senator’s wife added that LGBTQ people are twice as likely to have a mental health condition while dealing “with so much more social stigma and discrimination” than their straight and cisgender counterparts. “This month we’re going to have a table for June 30 working with the [California] Department of Mental Health at the Pride parade,” she added.
FundaMental Change also operates an LGBT Youth TalkLine and Trans Lifeline. Padilla noted the organization’s work combatting stigma. “One thing that we recognize both coming from Latino families is the need to overcome stigma,” he said. “There’s a lot of
