Why Mental Health Awareness Month Hits Different for AANHPI Communities
May is a month of particular significance for the Asian American community, marking both Mental Health Awareness Month, and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month. As a minority community in the USA, we have a unique experience of how mental health intersects with social and cultural influences. It’s not just an individual concern for us, but rather shaped by family dynamics, heritage, power structures, and the overall immigrant experience.
This article will explore the unique mental health experience of AANHPI communities and what the future of effective, inclusive mental health care for Asian Americans looks like.
The silent struggle: Mental health in AANHPI communities
While each member of the AANHPI community will have their own experiences, varying across cultures as well as families, there is a common thread that tends to unite us. Mental health generally remains a taboo and unspoken topic in our communities, where stigmas and misconceptions around conditions like depression and anxiety still endure. Traditional points of view can see mental illness as a personal failing and a source of shame upon not only yourself but those who raised you. In turn, pushing those who experience distress to suppress their emotions rather than express them and seek help. This cultural context is undeniable and goes a long way in explaining the underutilization of mental health services in the AANHPI community.
According to the Mass General Research Institute, only 8.6% of Asian Americans sought mental health services, compared to 17.9% of the general U.S. population, highlighting how crucial it is to increase mental health awareness in our communities and to provide more accessible and culturally-competent mental health care services.
The mental health impact of living as a minority
This AANHPI Heritage Month, we want to acknowledge how living as a minority in the USA deeply informs our mental health as well as how we seek care and support.
The minority experience is often disproportionately colored by prejudice, exclusion, and institutionalised racism. In addition to that, there are the challenging day to day experiences that we all share (facing an incredibly uncertain world, financial difficulty, political upheaval), causing many AANHPI individuals to experience higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression, despite still being less likely to seek the care needed.
On a societal level, we are often asked to prove that we deserve to be here by providing exceptionally high value to American society. Additionally, the model minority myth paints Asian Americans as the perfect immigrants: universally successful, highly intelligent over-achievers. You can imagine, then, that under these pressures it can be extremely difficult to ask for help or drop the facade that everything is always alright.
When it comes to family, we can face an additional layer of pressure, acutely aware of the sacrifices our parents have made in the hopes that they will translate to our successes (whether these expectations are explicit or not). As children of immigrants, we can feel an overwhelming need to perform well in school or be successful at work, not only to perform as the model minority or to make our parents proud, but also to justify everything they gave up for us.
Consider the societal difficulties that the AANHPI community faces; often growing up with fewer resources than their peers, cultural barriers (e.g. maybe your parents didn’t understand the American education system and weren’t able to help you with college applications) and differentiating factors like stricter parents, different clothes or “weird” lunches, and it becomes easier to see why many of us grew accustomed to code-switching—the internal juggling act of trying to meet your family’s expectations while blending in at school or work. You might grow up feeling like you’re constantly translating between two worlds, wondering if you quite fit into either of them. Over time, this tension between the different versions of you and a foggy sense of who you feel like you really are can quietly chip away at your mental well-being.
Add all of this up and the experience of being a minority can lead to feeling behind or different from everyone else – an extremely difficult weight to bear.
The weight of the past: trauma across generations
Beyond the present day experience of immigrants and their children, the AANHPI community can also bear the weight of the past, inherited from family histories that might have been shaped by war, colonization, forced migration, poverty, or systemic racism. Many of these influences live on, even if they seem to be in the past, or your family claims to be unaffected by them.
Such traumatic experiences can manifest as generational trauma – trauma shared by a single generation who experienced the same event, e.g. a specific war, or intergenerational trauma – the way that trauma can be passed down between different generations. While you may not have lived through the same generational traumas as your parents, you can still absorb the emotional consequences: anxiety, guilt, perfectionism, or the sense that rest is unsafe and emotions are indulgent.
Barriers to accessing mental health care for the AANHPI community
In the face of such varied stressors, one would hope the AANHPI community would be utilizing mental health services, however the reality is much different. Various obstacles come between us and accessing the mental health care that we deserve.
Cultural stigma
The stigmatization of mental illness in many AANHPI cultures can make you feel a lot of shame and reluctance around seeking help for what you’re experiencing. You might feel pressured to handle everything by yourself and present like you “have it all together” outwardly.
The truth is that there is no reason to be embarrassed for seeking mental health care. On the contrary, by prioritizing your wellbeing, you are better able to show up for your family, friends, and yourself.
Language barriers
In the USA, there is often limited availability of bilingual therapists that are able to communicate effectively with various immigrant communities and backgrounds. Seeing as one of the core tenets of an effective therapy relationship is a deep trust and understanding, this can be a serious hurdle to receiving quality care.
Financial constraints
While certain parts of the AANHPI population are associated with the model minority myth of extremely successful careers, behind this stereotype hides the reality that many work in industries with limited job security or benefits. Not to mention that for undocumented immigrants or those in mixed-status families, the fear of interacting with formal institutions can also prevent them from seeking care, even when they need it most.
One-size-fits-all care
Even if AANHPI individuals overcome these barriers and are able to access care, they are often met with antiquated, one-size-fits all therapy frameworks, based on studies that don’t take into account the minority/immigrant experience and apply tools that are proven to be less effective for people of color.
Without taking into account cultural context, providers can fail to understand the full breadth of the patient’s experience and deliver treatment that isn’t the best match for their client’s particular circumstances.
For example, certain forms of therapy emphasize setting strong boundaries, including cutting “toxic” family members out of your life – it often doesn’t feel this simple in Asian American families. People aren’t just “toxic”, they are acting out generations of tradition and values that translate differently outside their home context.
In order for the AANHPI community to access the mental health care they need, the standard of care needs to move towards a culturally-responsive model that acknowledges and respects the unique experiences of diverse individuals.
At Anise, we provide culturally-responsive care that understands and integrates patients’ cultural backgrounds into the therapeutic process. This approach fosters trust, improves engagement, and enhances treatment outcomes.
How you can support AANHPI mental health
This May, as we observe both Mental Health Awareness Month and AANHPI Heritage Month, we invite you to take intentional steps toward supporting mental health within Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities. These actions may seem small, but collectively, they break stigma and create space for healing.
Celebrate cultural heritage
In spite of the struggles we face as a minority community, we are fundamentally united by strength, resilience, and vibrant cultures full of so much beauty. Focus on developing a loving relationship with your heritage as a step towards alleviating the stress it may place on your mental health. Try to take part in uplifting cultural traditions and reconnect with the languages, stories, and the cuisine of your heritage to seek affirmation and connection.
Promote open dialogue
Many people suffer in silence simply because they’ve never seen someone like them speak openly about mental health. By initiating conversations with friends, family, or coworkers, you help normalize what’s often seen as taboo. You don’t have to have all the answers—just asking someone how they’re really doing can make a powerful difference.
Share resources
One of the most powerful ways to dismantle structural challenges like community-wide mental health challenges and access to care is to come together and support each other. Something as simple as sharing an article (we have a wealth of resources available on the Anise Blog), a therapist directory, or even sharing a mental health event that’s happening in your city on social media can open the door for someone else in the community.
Support culturally competent services
Not only is culturally-responsive care not yet the norm in mental health, but many people aren’t even familiar with the concept yet and don’t know that it’s an option available to them. By advocating for, and seeking out, culturally-responsive mental health care providers like Anise, you are making a vote for a future of care that recognizes how culture shapes mental health. Whether you’re seeking help yourself or supporting a loved one, sharing platforms like Anise Health helps pave the way for a more inclusive future for the mental health industry.
