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While dominant MH frameworks often privilege individual-level processes, Latinx perspectives emphasize interdependence, reciprocity, and collective wellbeing. This study examines how youth in rural Mexican communities conceptualize care as both a value and a set of practices that sustain MH and emotional wellbeing (EW) and their broader social and ecological worlds.
Methods: Using Photovoice, a participatory action method designed to elevate community knowledge and promote social change, this study engaged 43 adolescents from two rural communities in Puebla, Mexico. Participants completed four school-based workshops in which they photographed factors that supported and hindered their EW. Guided by the SHOWeD framework, youth critically reflected on their images: What do you See here? What is really Happening? How does this relate to Our MH? Why does this condition Exist? and What can we Do about it? Participants collaboratively pile-sorted their photographs and narratives, generating thematic categories. Two representatives from a local community-based organization served as liaisons, and social service externship students from a Mexican university supported small-group facilitation. Data were analyzed using polytextual thematic analysis, an approach well-suited for multimodal datasets.
Results: Across themes, participants consistently identified cuidar (to care for) as both a value and a practice fundamental to MH/EW. Care was described as both a guiding value and an actionable practice, expressed in two interrelated forms: passive care (non-maleficence) and active care. Passive care emphasized refraining from harm toward people, animals, and the natural environment (e.g., avoiding violence, pollution, and environmental degradation). Active care involved intentional practices to preserve and nurture relationships, cultural traditions, and ecological systems (e.g., maintaining friendships, protecting agriculture and local customs). Participants emphasized that care practices are expressions of the value attributed to relationships, environments, and cultural lifeways, and are essential for preserving factors that support MH/EW. Conversely, the absence or misalignment of care—particularly between participants’ values and perceived community practices—emerged as a significant stressor, increasing the risk of loss of valued people, places, and ways of life. Participants also described how broader environmental and socioeconomic conditions can force families to make difficult choices to sustain themselves, even when those choices may conflict with their values around caring for animals, land, or other aspects of community life. In this way, threats to ecological and cultural sustainability were experienced as threats to MH.
Conclusions and Implications: Findings position care as a culturally grounded, relational framework that integrates MH and environmental stewardship within Latinx contexts. Implications include the need for social work interventions that center community-defined practices of care, incorporate relational and ecological dimensions of wellbeing, and conditions that limit communities’ ability to enact care in ways that align with their values. This study contributes to Latinx-focused social work scholarship and practice by advancing care as an ethic of practice and a holistic lens for culturally responsive MH services and environmental justice praxis.