By Nicole
Acevedo
Guadalupe Leija's 8-year-old son, Samuel, was finishing second grade at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, when it became the scene of one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.
Leija rushed to her son's school after learning of the shooting Tuesday.
Law enforcement officers were already on the scene, but that didn't stop her from feeling helpless.
Samuel survived.
The boy was not in the building where a gunman entered and killed 19 children and two teachers, but he was in other school buildings.
77 minutes have passed since Uvalde's murderer entered the school and the police managed to shoot him down
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Three days later, the second grader still hasn't talked about what happened that day.
Leija described Samuel as "the kind of kid who wants to know everything. But
to this day, he hasn't asked what happened or what's going on
," he told NBC News Thursday afternoon.
[How to talk to children after the school massacre in Texas? An expert shares recommendations]
To deal with the immediate and profound sense of loss, Leija and many others in her predominantly Hispanic city have been visiting the homes of those affected as they attend vigils to express their sorrow and condolences to the families who lost their loved ones and give them support.
They reveal the video of the Texas murderer entering the school with a rifle in hand
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But concerns about the long-term mental health toll that a tragedy of this magnitude can have on affected Latino families are emerging at a time when
"the entire city of Uvalde is very heartbroken
," said Leija, who is Mexican-American.
Uvalde Behavioral Health, part of the South Texas Rural Health Services network, is one of the mental health facilities that provides grief counseling services for shooting survivors and family members of victims in the city.
[Two days after the massacre in Uvalde, they question the police response and the husband of one of the teachers shot dead]
"It's not embarrassing to ask for help"
"Right now they are in pain, but soon they will be in anger," Myrta Garcia, executive director of South Texas Rural Health Services, told NBC News.
"They're going to be angry about what happened."
"They will be disappointed because their children died," Garcia said of parents who lost children in the shooting.
"We won't be able to give them an answer because we don't know the answer,
but we can teach them techniques so they can better understand what happened."
A girl survived the Uvalde massacre by pretending to be dead and staining herself with her friend's blood
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Uvalde Behavioral Health is one of the few centers that belong to the National Health Service Corps, a subdivision of the Department of Health and Human Services made up of a network of health care providers who work in underserved communities.
About 22% of Uvalde's population is uninsured
, a figure consistent with the national number of Latinos without health coverage;
approximately 80% of the population of the city of Uvalde is Hispanic, with the majority having Mexican-American roots.
[The Texas school killer ran away from his mother's house after a fight over Wi-Fi. He lived with her grandmother until he shot her]
Nationally, the uninsured rate among Latinos (20%) is more than double that of non-Hispanic whites (8%), according to recent data from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Although not having insurance can limit access to health care, community health centers like the one run by South Texas Rural Health Services in Uvalde often "make all kinds of concessions if a patient needs mental health care," Garcia said.
But perhaps most important is the work to destigmatize mental health services in Latino communities in need, particularly those most affected by the Uvalde school shooting, Garcia said.
"They were good people": a girl remembers her friends who died in the Uvalde massacre
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"There is no shame in asking for help and asking for some guidance or some therapy," he added.
The Community Health Development Center, another mental health institution that belongs to the National Health Service Corps, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that they were "mourning the loss of many family members in the massacre."
["I played dead so he wouldn't shoot me": says boy who survived Texas elementary school shooting]
"We are praying for everyone as we put in place a plan to address the need for long-term grief counseling. We ask you to be patient as we coordinate a response to help our community," the center said in the post.
Although Leija has done her best to keep her son away from any information about the shooting,
the father also knows that he will start asking questions.
According to Garcia, Leija's son and the other children who survived the shooting may be in shock and still unable to articulate that experience.
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"What they saw was not normal. What they heard was not normal," Garcia said.
"Now we have to wrap our arms around them, pray for them, serve them, encourage them, love them."
In the meantime, Leija said he and his wife have been preparing for when their son can talk about what he experienced that day.
"When the time comes, we will be ready," Leija said.
"It's going to be a while before everything goes back to normal... It's going to be a long time."
