Shedding New Light On the Asian-American Struggle With Mental Health

“Asian-American College Students Have a Higher Rate of Suicide than White College Students Do,” read the news headline of the Chinese newspaper that my parents scanned, then quickly tucked away.

I was angered by their seeming lack of concern. To me, Asian-American parents’ cold indifference, cultural expectations, and stigmatization of mental illness are the primary causes of such mental health statistics. And I lashed out at them. I blamed my parents’ lack of understanding and attention. I said that it was easy for them to ignore struggles with stress, depression, and anxiety—they had never experienced them before. With spite, I shouted that they did not—that they could not ever—understand the pressure of their expectations or their children’s struggle to assimilate in racialized America.

My parents sat in shocked silence, taking in everything I said. My mother was livid, but she bit back her words. My father lashed back, his voice full of rage. It was not fair to say that they hadn’t experienced stress or anxiety, he retorted. It was not easy for them, working over 10 hours a day in dismal conditions without the ability to vocalize their struggles due to language barriers at work. And it certainly wasn’t easy for them to leave everything they once knew and immigrate to the U.S., a country with a completely different set of cultural values. They faced the pressure of survival and will forever struggle to integrate into the U.S. They aimed to make their immigration narrative a successful one, but 10 years later, they feel nothing but disappointment. Perhaps, my father said bitterly, it would’ve been better back in China.

Their emotional, raw response was different from the one I expected, partly because they rarely—if ever—confided in me their emotions regarding work and life in the U.S., but also because their reaction ran counter to the standard narrative about Asian-Americans and mental health. Most models tell the stories of Asian-Americans who blame their struggle with mental health on tiger-parenting, cultural pressures, and the cold, emotionally numb Asian parent stereotype. Stigmas regarding mental illness in Asian culture, as well as a lack of understanding, are the most common explanations for why Asian-Americans are so hesitant to seek help from professionals. While there is a degree of truth in some of these narratives, particularly concerning the stigmas that surround mental health, these barriers do not fully explain why Asian-American college students are 1.6 times more likely to make a serious suicide attempt than all other students and three times less likely to seek professional help. Stigmas surrounding mental health are not unique to Asian-Americans; African-American and Latinx communities also stigmatize and misunderstand mental illnesses, but both are more likely to seek professional help than Asian-Americans. Thus, while the stigma surrounding mental illnesses plays into Asian-American students’ reluctance to seek help, the prevalence of stigma in other ethnic groups indicates that there are other reasons—stemming from distinct Asian-American experiences—responsible for our disproportionate mental health statistics.

My parents’ emotionally-charged reactions proved that they certainly are not as cold or distant as the Asian parent stereotypes suggest. If anything, our conversation revealed more commonalities in experience than I expected. Their struggles tell of a similar pressure to assimilate and the anxieties associated with the lack of belonging. Much like how Asian-Americans feel as though they are under immense cultural pressure, first-generation immigrant parents face the pressure of immigration and success. They thus identify with the struggles of their children and often deal with them with even fewer resources due to language barriers and their lack of a support system in the U.S. As a result, more often than not, first-generation immigrant parents are unable to come to terms with their failure to successfully integrate into American society.

These experiences shed another perspective on Asian-American children and their struggles with mental health. Disappointment due to immigration, barriers to assimilation, and racism play much larger roles in Asian-American students’ struggle with mental health than we realize.

Professor David Eng and psychotherapist Shinhee Han discuss similar findings in their research on the depression and racial melancholy of Asian-Americans. They posit that first-generation immigrant parents often sacrifice themselves in hopes of fulfilling a successful immigration narrative. However, once confronted with the realities of immigration and the false promise of the American dream, their disappointment translates to a pressure for redemption, confronted by their children, perpetuating a cycle of sacrifice. Eng and Han suggest that “children of immigrants ‘repay’ this sacrifice only by repeating and perpetuating its melancholic logic—by berating and sacrificing themselves.” The story of loss and disillusionment with immigration echoed in my father’s sentiments helped me realize that first-generation Asian-Americans’ deeper anxieties may be caused by the pressure to redeem less successful immigration narratives. If others were to recognize this, we could help our families break away from a relentless cycle of senseless sacrifice and mend the rift between ourselves and our parents.

Asian-Americans’ struggles against racism and assimilation may also offer a better explanation as to why Asian-American students are less likely to seek clinical help. Writer George Qiao, in “Why are Asian-American Kids Killing Themselves,” argues that mental health professionals, who are more equipped to treat white patients, “uphold the outdated belief that Asian-Americans cannot possibly be affected by racism” because they buy into the model minority myth. The myth reinforces the stereotype that Asian-Americans do not face real consequences of racism because they are a “model minority,” whose success in the U.S. parallels—or even exceeds—that of white Americans. In doing so, it neglects the fact that Asian-Americans do deal with a sense of loss associated with being “perpetually foreign.” Eng and Han’s work also addresses the constant anxiety Asian-American students experience because “they feel ‘psychically nowhere,’ ill-equipped to deal with the subtler yet still existing barriers to assimilation.” When mental health professionals fail to acknowledge that Asian-Americans can experience stress due to racial discrimination and the struggles of assimilation, it follows that Asian-Americans would be reluctant to seek professional help.

Mental health professionals must be trained to understand Asian-Americans’ unique relationship with racism and assimilation, rather than resorting to the same overused narratives that accuse Asian-American culture, distant parents, and cultural stigmas as the roots of Asian-American mental illness. These narratives not only fail to treat Asian-American students, but also distance us from our own culture and parents, who are depicted as cold and backward. Resolution of these conflicts with mental health also relies on the children of immigrants—we must reconcile our relationship with our parents and endeavor to better understand the structures in place that produce the immense pressure and anxieties Asian-Americans feel. To heal, we must learn to break the senseless cycle of sacrifice, forgive ourselves, and at last, move on.