Even though I’m bilingual, I’ve always felt as if conversations about mental health were restricted to one language. I went to school and learned about mental health conditions, asking for help, and the language needed to describe all these experiences in my classes and from my peers– but as soon as I got home, I suddenly lost all of the words I needed to talk to my family about my struggles, my concerns, and just as importantly, to ask how they were doing.
While never stated explicitly, I felt as if mental health was only acceptable in one of my cultures. I had only seen the Asian American community around me shown as closed off, unemotional, and unwilling to discuss concepts like therapy and mental illness, because they were seen as weaknesses and personal failure. One only needed to work harder, to push past selfishly valuing oneself, and these problems would be solved, wouldn’t they? These kinds of struggles were for Westerners, uniquely American in their indulgence and lack of resolve. Our communities didn’t do that. We weren’t like that.Words like anxiety, depression, psychiatry didn’t exist in the vocabulary I was equipped with to connect with my community. I felt closed off, and I knew others did too, but none of us knew how to talk about it.
Conversations about mental health belong in all cultures, and we need to take an active role in creating this environment of inclusivity and integration. I’ve always wondered how many elders could have been helped through multilingual outreach, how many more kids could see themselves in media portrayals of these stories if they saw more families like them. Mental health struggles are deeply influenced by the cultural pressures and social contexts that surround them, and to reduce the stigma that uniquely impacts multicultural and immigrant communities, we need to make sure we hold this as a core value as we work to make education more accessible. Breaking stigma means that we need to change these systems for all. I hope that I’ll see more lives that look like mine, but also entirely unlike anything I’ve experienced before, because all of these stories deserve to be told.