“Im afraid to tell my parents”
“It’s not depression, it’s just overthinking”
“They will disown me”
“They wont get it”
Here are only a few comments I have heard from South Asian Americans in my family and social circles. Despite growing up and being reared in the United States, several of us are strongly impacted or afflicted by our family’s beliefs on mental disorder. The number of stories and times I’ve seen many girls and boys commit suicide and ingure themselves because they cant seek help for their mental health. The higher incidence of depression reported in this demographic may be attributed to a number of causes, including familial tension and anxiety. For several years, the neighborhood has battled against the stigma and unease that surround mental conditions.
Being a south Asian myself, I can relate to what it’s like to experience such health. Sharing sentiments can be challenging because it was unheard of in her family, which made it difficult for me to deal with her feelings. When I’m stressed or depressed, I sometimes can’t tell my parents because they won’t understand and won’t know what to say or do. When I was going through something, I wasn’t taught to express my sentiments; instead, I was taught to surpress them, even though that was the unhealthiest course of action.
South Asian immigrants are especially vulnerable to depression and related mental health problems. 24 Hindi-speaking women who had only recently immigrated to Canada were the subjects of a 2004 study that looked at the qualitative impacts of immigration on mental health. Many of the ladies surveyed agreed that they had not encountered any mental health problems in India.
Whenever anything terrible happened to me when I was a child, I rarely came to talk about it.
The brown method, however, favored silence to speech. Fearlessness is the praised way of life of a group that values perseverance, particularly once that community lives in America and is under social pressure to fit into a model minority image.
Unruly Bodies 
I experience this negative stigma in my community as well and it is highly upsetting. I don’t necessarily blame my community or family for upholding this stigma. They were not taught to express their emotions or struggles, thus taught us to do the same because we should be independent, fearless, and perserverant. But, with this class, it taught me that taking care of yourself is so important and each person’s experience is unique and valid in their right. I think the first step in addressing the stigma around mental health, especially in Asian communities, is having honest conversations and teach future generations that mental health issues and struggles are not weaknesses, rather they are what make us human and that’s beautiful.
I would say that the immigrant south asian parents never grew up with understanding what mental health is. Now when their kids go through mental health problems, they don’t understand why they would be happening. They care about their kids but they aren’t educated bout the importance of mental health. I am sure if they knew how it affects their kids’s daily life they would take some action against it to help them. But because of the lack of education they ignore any signs of mental issues.