A Silent Destruction: The Stigma of Mental Health Within the South Asian Community
Jagdeep Nesbit abruptly lost her mother in seventh grade and didn’t know how to cope. The loss was so suffocating that it began to manifest as grief and depression.
Being a 12-year-old, she was unfamiliar with these thoughts and feelings and they slowly began to affect her school life. Her school counselor noticed the irregular behavior and recommended that she see a therapist. But the recommendation was sent to Nesbit’s older sister rather than her father because she didn’t want him to know she had been having these issues.
“Pride is huge,” Nesbit said. “They always fear there is something wrong with their child, so they want it kept in a box. If you leave this box, you will ruin the pride of the family. I couldn’t let my dad know about this because it would’ve crushed him.”
Growing up as a young woman of Indian descent: I associated one word with mental illnesses. Brokenness. I never remember being told that it was bad, but it was just something that was never spoken about. Everyone and everything needed to be perfect like a well-oiled machine. And this is where this dangerous problem originated.
Being born and raised in an Indian household means being born with a collectivistic and prideful background.
Instead of thinking in I, think of we.
There is this notion that the members of the family are obedient and loyal to one another because the unity represents their pride. So when something goes wrong, as it does in every family, this is where the shame comes from. And this is where the dangerous issue of silence about mental health begins.
Many Indians of any age, like Nesbit, struggle with expressing their mental health challenges. But, on top of that, they often find themselves struggling alone and are shamed in the process because their community cannot and will not acknowledge the problem. And the numbers are hard to overlook.
In 2017, the WHO reported that suicide is the highest cause of death in India for people between the ages of 15-29. Reports from MHA in 2018 said 18.9% of Asian American high schoolers considered suicide, and 10.8% attempted to take their own lives. In that same year, out of 3,556 Indian participants in a survey, 26% said they were afraid of being mentally ill.
The causes are complex. When Indians move to America, they bring the cultural and religious beliefs, the hierarchical family structure, and sometimes even the emotional baggage that comes from immigrating. And most are relatively recent immigrants. According to the census in 2010, 87.2% of Indian American adults were foreign-born and had lived in the US for 10 years or less.
All this exacerbates the problem along with the stigmatized mental health problems and it often makes it hard for people to find help. But it is important for the Indian community – and the wider community to acknowledge the problem and reach out.
These numbers are too high and shouldn’t be part of our reality.
Shinder Gill, an adjunct professor in child development at CSUS, had also been suffering with severe depression and self-esteem issues, but she had no idea until she was in her late 20s.
“I was a lot heavier back then and was reminded often of how fat I was, because Indian girls are supposed to look a certain way,” Gill said. “I knew it wasn’t normal, but I didn’t realize how much it affected my self-worth. We are raised that way, things are tough, but we have to put on that game face.”
The inner workings of this problem can point back to multiple elements and environments, each one being very unique. That’s why it is so complex.
Indian men and women both suffer because of the socialization that has established a hierarchy within the community. It is particularly difficult for women because they bear the responsibility of everything in the household, from cooking, to taking care of the family, it’s common for women to be abandoned if they are diagnosed with a mental illness.
“Impact on marriageability of women is a major source of stigma,” Dr. Vasudev Makhija, psychiatrist and founder and president of the South Asian Mental Health Initiative and Network, said. “If a family member has a mental illness, the family may maintain a secrecy; they may even delay or avoid obtaining treatment.”
But Indian men suffer too: they are less likely to seek help or talk to a therapist because they are afraid to be seen as weak, Nesbit said. They must be the leader in the family and represent the power of the patriarchy.
“It’s the struggle of being an American and being Indian,” she said. “The different dynamic exists between their generation and ours; it’s old school thinking. They’re holding onto these ideas because they are afraid of the [Western] melting pot.”
Honest conversations need to start happening, and shameful stereotypes discarded. To be able to identify and talk about mental health is the direction the Indian community needs to move towards. And that starts with organizations such as SAMHIN.
SAMHIN was created by Makhija to educate the South Asian community and show the impact of a professional health help center. As an Indian, he knows how much effort it takes to confined in someone outside of the family, but it takes time.
“SAMHIN has a dedicated number for people to call when they have questions on mental illness and treatments. We get calls regularly,” Makhija said. “One of the things we will do is address the source of discomfort in seeing a therapist. We provide support and education without judging. We have to educate them that seeking treatment is a sign of strength and not weakness.”
I grew up hearing about how my grandmother was subjected to the abuse from my grandfather. She suffered with severe depression and threatened to kill herself multiple times because of the amount of stress that had engulfed her life.
I grew up hearing friends suffer from thinking they were flawed because they weren’t the “perfect child.”
To be the one who denies the importance of mental health would be denying the very existence of that person’s suffering.
I refuse to be defined by the color of my skin. And I will equally refuse to be defined by my mental worth. Start having these imperative conversations, otherwise you might lose someone you didn’t know was silently suffering.