World Mental Health Day
The expectation to be “normal” is relevant in everyday life. It is affected by our language, actions, and the culture you grow up in. Today is World Mental Health Day, and we are continuously fighting the stigma and negative connotations associated with mental illnesses.
As stated above in the short film above, it has been statistically proven that Asian Americans between 12-24 years old have higher suicide rates than others. Since 2010 in the American Journal of Public Health, a study showed that Asian Americans were also three times less likely to seek for help regarding mental health issues than their white counterparts. In 2011, NAMI released a report on Asian American girls having “ the highest rate of depressive symptoms of any racial, ethnic or gender group”. A big factor regarding this is the desire to fulfill the stereotype of Asian Americans being the “Model Minority”, which has continuously been proven to affect AAPIAs in a negative way.
This doesn’t mean we as a community are not doing anything to combat this. Yes, the stigma is deeply engrained within older generations and within our cultures, but we are moving forward to open up dialogues, discussion, and education in modern society. In fact, earlier this year in May (APA Heritage Month and Mental Illness Awareness Month), Rep. Judy Chu introduced a bill to focus on serving the AAPIA community in regards to behavioral and mental health.
Resources like the National Alliance on Mental Illness are also now looking for new ways to combat and approach these concerns. A lot of our current solutions are created and made with a Western mindset. However, something we must focus on is how to introduce the idea that anyone can have a mental illness to older generations, especially those with a language barrier or immigrated to America? The main ideas are similar: listen and learn to those who are affected, and come up with different plans and solutions to their issues. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to mental health, as each individual is different. But we do need to start addressing how cultural values can impact our psychiatric levels, both positively and negatively.
We also need to have more of a platform for AAPIA within the mental health community. We have this issue, but do we have representatives to speak up for us? A big part of working towards a better future and a place where we can discuss our issues without the stigma, is being active, present, and aware in these issues (shout out to APASO for this year’s focus!).
Thankfully, Filipinos and Filipino Americans are starting to understand these issues more positively. While parts of the video above are in Tagalog, there is a shared understanding that mental illnesses like anxiety and depression can affect anyone, and they are recognizing the fact that it is an issue within our community that needs to be addressed.
The video below documents a YouTuber’s interaction with depression, as he takes references from past PASS president Kevin L. Nadal’s informational book, Filipino American Psychology: A Handbook of Theory, Research, and Clinical Practice.
Please be aware that one narrative of their mental health journey is not applicable to everyone, and that the following video contains strong language and brief mentions of self harm.
My Journey
Personally, I've dealt with mental illness for most of my middle school years to current day. It's a continuous battle between me and myself, and I feel that I am affected by it in everyday life. Mentioned numerous times in the videos and articles above, what impacted me a lot was the idea that mental illness is something that you keep a secret. There has always been a need for me to pretend to be better than others, as I feel Filipinos are very prideful of not only themselves, but their children and their family and how they are presented to others. I grew up being compared to family friends and classmates, and I often compared myself to my younger sister. The push for me to be within a medical field did not help, and even now after discussing it multiple times with my family, I feel like I am doing a disservice to my name and my legacy for trying to find my place in a creative occupation.
My first real interaction with the stigma was when I was about 8 years old. It was after a party, where I believe I had been acting up. As a child, I felt like everyone was against me as I argued with my father in the car. I'm not sure what I did or what exactly was said, but what stuck with me was the threat that was yelled: "I'll just put you in a mental hospital then!"
There's some scary connotation with mental health and mental hospitals. For one, mental hospitals are only for the "crazy". And "crazy" people do bad things and are a threat to our society. Rather than being a place for people to get help, a mental hospital to me, at the time, was a place you were left, isolated and alone, until you die. And to younger me, that was the most terrifying thing I could imagine. Why would any child like to feel like they were being abandoned in scary place, all alone, with people they assume are not like them at all?
Now, however, I understand there is more to a mental hospital than that. Having visited a few myself, and having been in the psychiatric wards, I understand the doctors and nurses are there to help you. They have therapists on hand and they run tests, and it's as scary as a hospital can get (you know, with shots and evaluations), but it's not anything "evil" or "bad" at all. There shouldn't be shame in going to get evaluated and seeking help, but I felt pressured by it my whole life.
Another aspect of my mental health story is religion. As widely known, the Philippines were colonized by the Spanish for centuries. With their people, they brought their religion. And Filipinos now are very devout in their faith, and believe in very conservative theories of Catholicism. One that has always been hanging over my head is the idea that "God sends those who commit suicide to hell".
Younger me was just as devout as my family. I went to a Catholic school, went to mass every week, prayed before meals, and prayed before bed. To consider being suicidal and depressed and be told that I would be sent to hell in response paid a big burden. I became less trusting of my religion, which promised that all believers go to heaven and that God forgives, but taking my own life was a direct attack on the Commandments and the only solution for me was to pray my sins away.
I ended up keeping to myself and internalizing my feelings of self hate. I didn't understand why I was feeling so negative and angsty all the time, and why I couldn't talk to my parents without feeling upset and getting in arguments. I didn't know why little things that was said to me affected me for years and why I felt the need to cry myself to sleep most nights in the 6th grade.
Things eventually did get better. At some point, my mother rethought the idea that "my kids can't be 'crazy'!" and read countless books on mental health late at night when she thought we were asleep. She tried to enroll me and my little sister to counseling multiple times. I am now grateful that she made the effort, but back then, I was still held back by my own stigmas with mental health.
I knew I had depression by 5th grade. My mother started seeking help for us when I was in 7th. But for some reason I never felt comfortable talking with the councilors and therapists and would cry and complain every time I had an appointment. I thoroughly denied one of the first steps to a better well-being: you need to recognize there is an issue and actively try to find help to address it.
Eventually, when I got to high school, I had what most people call a "passive suicide attempt". Around that time, I started taking my mental health more seriously. I would meet with my school counselor, yet still under the guidelines that I could not expressively talk about my family's interaction with it (not that I followed those instructions... However because of it I am sometimes wary about what I share to this day). I eventually started attending Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) with joint therapist sessions which helped pinpoint exactly what issues I was having and how to better cope. I also started taking medication, which I am currently taking now, which improves my mood, helps me be less impulsive, and gives me more energy and determination to get things done.
Of course, every once in awhile I have set backs and am reminded that even if I am trying to improve, there are still a lot out there that cannot. And my issues don't just lie within my diagnosis of severe depression. There are eating disorders and anxiety issues within the AAPIA community that is not addressed. When I started taking my mental health seriously again, my pediatrician started including a survey before appointments as screening for mental health concerns. I scored very high with (surprise surprise) being depressed, and she came and talked to me afterwards. The pediatrician had been my doctor for most of my life, she was a Filipina like my mother, and they would often talk in Tagalog even when I was in the room (I grew up never understanding Tagalog, asides from a few words and phrases). She also relied heavily on BMI and would gossip with my mom whenever I gained weight, causing me to go through a month of fasting and starving myself one year. So when I filled out the survey and she came to see me, the first thing out of her mouth was, "I thought it was only your sister who was crazy!"
This event happened in the last few years of high school (around 10th-11th grade). I had known I was depressed in 5th, and my mom started working to help my mental issues in 7th. So why was only my sister's mental concerns addressed with my doctor and not my own?
I was brought back to reality after that. I am more open about discussing my experiences and how I am affected, if only to prevent other AAPIA and Filipinx Americans from losing hope in themselves, their family, and their culture. I've made art from my struggles and lead presentations on having depression and social anxiety. And most of all, I am still seeking to improve myself and our community to #FightTheStigma.
