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In the face of cultural as well as systemic barriers, many Asian Americans and Asian immigrants are struggling with the constant emotional onslaught. Therapists and community members say it’s common for immigrants, Asian or otherwise, to want to avoid making trouble or drawing attention to themselves. But Asian immigrants in particular, as well as many Asian Americans, also face some traditions that discourage speaking up and turning to mental health resources.

In many East Asian cultures, “there’s this sort of implicit understanding that you’re to suffer and you are to endure it,” said Steven Sust, a Chinese American who is a child-and-adolescent psychiatrist at Stanford University. “There’s a Chinese statement like ‘bitter life,’ or ‘life is bitterness’ — ‘meng fu,’ ” Sust added, which, he said, means “to just sort of grin and bear it.”

This sensibility can have a devastating effect, experts say, compounded by a lack of mental health resources in the necessary languages and a shortage of counselors who are not only sensitive to these realities but who share Asian heritage. Asian psychologists make up about 4 percent of the profession, while the Asian share of the nation’s population is closer to 6 percent.

Although the numbers of Asians experiencing anxiety and depression is rising, Asians in the United States access mental health care at half the rate of other racial groups, according to a 2019 study published by the American Psychiatric Association. In the past few years, however, social justice and grass-roots Asian American organizations have come together to encourage Asians to speak up and challenge the bias against mental health care. They’ve held rallies, offered free intervention workshops, and created directories of resources. And they’re not shy about taking on the cultural norms that have kept Asians silent.

Read more at WashingtonPost.com.

Since the pandemic started, mental health experts have worried that the emotional and mental stress created by COVID would lead to a rise in suicides. It’s a trend suicide prevention advocate Tonja Myles has kept a close eye on, especially in the black community. According to a recent study, African American boys between the ages of 5 and 12 are more likely to die by suicide than any other age group. Nationwide, suicides among Black children under 18 are up 71 percent in the past decade.

“So, in the last couple of years we saw the uptick of suicide by African-American males, and during COVID it went off the roof,” said Myles. Lysha Best is the Louisiana Director for RI International. She said conversations about mental health in the black community was considered taboo for years.

Lysha Best is the Louisiana Director for RI International. She said conversations about mental health in the black community was considered taboo for years.

“When we talk about stigma, I think that’s the biggest thing for us. It’s always like we don’t want anybody to know what’s going on in our household,” said Best.

Myles said these talks must start young if we want to see the trend change. “A lot of times, African-American men are told that you have to suck it up, you cannot show your feelings and you can’t cry. That’s not healthy for anyone. So, we have to change that when we’re talking to our babies, our young boys that it’s ok to cry, it’s ok to feel, you’re going to be ok,” said Best. Both Myles and Best said it’s imperative we continue to have these types of open talks on a more consistent and comfortable basis. From there, they believe they can save countless amounts of lives.

Read more at WAFB9.com.

Communities predominantly composed of Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) have lagged behind in coronavirus vaccination rates after soaring ahead in COVID-19 mortality rates since the early days of the pandemic. A lack of access to the vaccine and mistrust both play a part in the disparity.

Newly released Denver Public Health data have found that vaccination rates are higher in wealthier Denver metro area neighborhoods than in low-income neighborhoods where more people of color live. Statewide disparities in coronavirus vaccination rates are clear in new race and ethnicity data on the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s (CDPHE) COVID-19 information dashboard. The early numbers—with 78% of vaccinated individuals represented—show that statewide, nearly 68% of those vaccinated are white.

“We have to do something different, especially in the health care setting,” said Oswaldo Grenardo, MD, the chief diversity and inclusion officer with Centura Health. At Centura, that has included diversity councils at multiple Centura facilities stressing the importance of the vaccine, community outreach groups like Promotores and Promotoras de Salud, and “real people” like Rusaka.

“We are working with community influencers. People tend to trust those who live in the neighborhood and look like them,” said Megan Mahncke, senior vice president of external communications for SCL Health. Small pop-up clinics will be appearing in underserved neighborhoods and communities across the state. Mobile hospital vans will be deployed to neighborhoods, churches, schools and other community gathering places for vaccine events.

The State of Colorado, along with a large web of partner groups that include major hospital systems, is making a new, concerted effort to address both the mistrust and access factors.

Read more at ColoradoTrust.org.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. When broken down by race, suicide is the first leading cause of death among Asian American young adults age 15-24. This is true of no other racial group in this age range in America.

There is not enough research on how to prevent suicide among Asian Americans in particular. What makes this research more challenging to do is that Asian Americans are also the least likely racial group to seek and utilize mental health services. When an Asian American death occurs by suicide, it is not simply because that person experienced risk factors. Today, many research dollars go into the development of computer algorithms and genetic biomarkers to precisely calculate who is at risk. Will these methods do justice to the racialized experience of being Asian American in the U.S.?

Suicide among Asian Americans is a seriously unaddressed problem that could become endemic in a rapidly growing community with little to no direction on how to stop it.

Read more at TheConversation.com.

A bill introduced in the House by Majority Leader John Bell (R-Wayne) would seek to improve services related to mental health and substance abuse for military veterans. House Bill 370, titled “No Veteran Left Behind,” would establish a pilot program expanding the Veterans Justice Intervention (VJI) program in Brunswick, Craven, Cumberland, Onslow, Union and Wayne counties. The money for the program included in the bill calls for half a million to be appropriated from the N.C. General Fund.

The focus of the program includes expansion of training for local law enforcement, local sheriff’s offices and a variety of first responders on veteran-specific crisis intervention and suicide prevention. Those participating in the training will also get better acquainted with resources made available by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Read more at NSJOnline.com.

I Ola Lahui is a Hawai‘i nonprofit corporation in operation since 2017. Their mission is to provide culturally minded, evidence-based behavioral health services that are responsive to the needs of medically underserved, Native Hawaiian, and rural communities. They provide behavioral health services that are tailored to the unique needs of each community and train the next generation of providers while they do it.

“Our accredited training program places future psychologists in neighbor island, rural, and undeserved communities where they can provide behavioral health services while they are training,” said ukahi Austin Seabury, Ph.D., Executive Director and Licensed Clinical Psychologist of I Ola Lāhui Inc. “Using this model, we’ve been very successful at placing psychologists in settings where they get hired on and remain once they are licensed. In this way, we create a sustainable workforce to serve in our most needed areas. We are working with the University on interdisciplinary training models to include social work, pharmacy, family medicine and psychiatry. We engage with a community to understand their needs and then develop a program in partnership with the community health organizations in that community to meet those needs.”

Read more at KHON2.com.