By admin
Asian Mental Health Collective is about a year old, but you wouldn’t know it from its list of accomplishments so far. The org hosts group therapy sessions and weekly roundtable discussions, and has created a directory of Asian mental health professionals. It organizes an annual mental health conference, The Transformation. This year, AMHC hopes to start subsidizing therapy.
A lot has happened relatively quickly, but this work has been a long time coming, said Christopher Vo, LMFT, the org’s chief of operations. Vo started as an admin for the Subtle Asian Mental Health Facebook group about three years ago, one of the earlier spaces to speak to “the growing need for mental health [services] within the Asian community,” he said. As the follower numbers ticked up and topics became more serious, Vo and his colleagues created AMHC to expand the group’s mission: to destigmatize mental health within the Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) community.
Mental Health Stigma in APIA Communities
There’s a strong stigma around mental health in APIA communities for a few reasons, Vo told POPSUGAR. For one thing, “you have the concept of honor and saving face really preventing us from being vulnerable, from communicating our needs,” he said. “We are constantly expected to put our best face forward in order to not bring shame to our community.”
The generational gap also presents issues. Many APIA parents immigrated to the US to escape from trauma, Vo said, “oftentimes fleeing terrible situations, whether it be war, famine, poverty . . . coming to this country to seek a better life.” They may not be able to communicate those experiences to the second generation in a helpful way, he explained. Instead, it can manifest in a high-pressure demand for their children to excel in all areas in order to live up to their parents’ expectations.
“Oftentimes, the first generation lacks the language entirely to be able to speak about mental health,” Vo added. As an example, he noted that in the Vietnamese community, “there is no word for depression or anxiety.” Instead, the only way to describe mental health issues is to use the physical symptoms. “‘Sad’ becomes, ‘I’m feeling tired’ or ‘I’m feeling stomach pain.’ Feeling ‘distracted’ is actually anxiety,” Vo said. “It’s just very difficult to even begin to talk about topics like depression, suicide.”
