Unknown Speaker 0:01 Everyone wants a strong, healthy mind, but not understanding mental health can lead to challenges. That's why it's crucial for people to have access to resources and mental health supports. In this episode, Paula Tran speaks to advocates in Asian diasporic communities who are working to make them more accessible. This is Same Difference. Unknown Speaker 0:34 I had my first anxiety attack in Kelowna when I was in my first year of university. I was sitting in a coffee shop downtown in December. It was bitterly cold outside, at least for me. It was snowing too. I hated it when it snowed. I still do. Anyway, I remember it being finals season, and I was rushing to write a final essay for English class that I should have started earlier. It was due in two days. My fingers were typing faster than I thought I could. I decided to take a break one hour after starting my essay, and I sat back in my chair. I looked at the laptop in front of me. I scan through my essay and immediately hated every single word I just wrote. Unknown Speaker 1:36 I remember suddenly feeling very lightheaded. My breath became short and unmanageable. My heart started pounding in my chest. I looked around and realized that my vision was blurry. I panicked, which made my breathing even worse, I remember thinking, What if I can't make the deadline? What if I failed the essay? What if? What if? What if? I didn't have the words to describe how I felt back then. But I now know that I was having an anxiety attack. Mental health is not something you talk about at home. Mental Health Awareness isn't a widespread thing in most Asian countries, even. A lot of Asian people think that mental health is a sign of weakness. Others think that depression and anxiety is a flaw personal character. In Vietnam, where my parents are from depression is seen as sadness and coping mechanisms aren't acknowledged because of the stigma. And this is why mental health resources are underfunded and underutilized in many parts of Asia. Unknown Speaker 2:51 Jed Chun, a mental health therapist based in San Gabriel, California, says that this is a common problem many of his clients face. Unknown Speaker 3:00 My name is Jed. I'm a therapist. I'm based out of Los Angeles, California. I am one of technically my title is the Director of Community programming at the Asian Mental Health Collective. But I am more or less kind of tied into a lot of the different programs that we run. Unknown Speaker 3:17 Jed is part of the Asian Mental Health Collective that aims to normalize and destigmatize mental health in Asian communities. The collective tries to make mental health resources accessible and approachable to Asian communities around the world. One way they are doing that is by fostering a community online. Unknown Speaker 3:36 So I feel like this is definitely something that comes up a lot, right? It comes up a lot in our group, it comes up as a question oftentimes about how do I deal with my parents? How do I how do I, how do I make it so that they can kind of understand what it is that therapy may do for me, right? Or maybe just understand what it is that I'm going through? I think part of it is that aspect of sharing people's experiences. Right? Part of it is on our Facebook group, right, just opening up the conversation for people who have gone through it before people who have experienced that people who have had success to be able to share what they did to these people who are still trying to figure out how to go about addressing the stigma and addressing these cultural issues. Right? Unknown Speaker 4:24 Jed says that he has always wanted to be a therapist. His parents worked in helping professions. His mom is a Christian marriage counselor and his dad is a pastor. Jed learn about the human connection and how it can lead to healing as a child. These teachings stuck with him when he started graduate school training to be a therapist. Unknown Speaker 4:44 The difficulty is that a lot of people don't know what that looks like, right? If you tell your parents Hey, I have anxiety your parents like, Okay, what does that mean, right? I mean, in a general sense, it's like okay, so you worry about things, you know? if, if, if they have that if they have that knowledge, at all, right? Depending on like, what language you speak whether or not your parents can understand the way that you communicate what you just said. A lot of it comes from, like we said before, like that education part of it, right? The more that we talk about what it is, the more that we explain what that looks like. I think that creates more of that opportunity for us to develop ways to understand it, and understand how to support people. Unknown Speaker 5:35 Another reason why many Asian Canadians don't access professional mental health care, is because there aren't a lot of Asian therapists out there. This is a big problem for Asians living in smaller towns and cities such as Kelowna, BC. In my five years of living in Kelowna, I have not met an Asian counselor or therapist. Non-Asian therapists are great. But sometimes it's nice to talk to someone who knows your culture and family dynamic. But for many Black, Indigenous and people of colour, accessing mental health is a luxury. Mona Wong is a nursing student at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan Campus. Currently, she is back in Colombia to finish her practicum requirements. She is an advocate for more mental health resources in the city. Unknown Speaker 6:20 I'm mostly advocating for a response team in terms of mental health crises, because, as of now, you know, there is one service available, but it's not 24 hours, it's not seven days a week. And, you know, you don't get to schedule when you have a crisis. So I do think that there needs to be something more concrete, you know, not just in Kelowna, but all over BC and, and hopefully all over Canada as well. I've heard of a lot of really good initiatives where there's a special mental health team that goes around. And, you know, it's not just for mental health crisis, but also in terms of substance abuse, and domestic abuse, things like that. And I think that, you know, it is really important to have a specialized team with this specialized knowledge. Because currently, it's mostly the police who are going to these calls, and they already have so much on their plate. And I don't believe that they're adequately equipped with the knowledge on deescalation, as shown over and over again, all across Canada. You know, just in the past couple of months, there has been so many deaths related to mental health calls that could have completely been avoided, if there was someone who was more equipped to deal with the situation. And so why are we letting all of these people die, when, you know, we can allocate some of these funds to create a better system. Just you know, that just makes sense. Unknown Speaker 7:54 Mona is also frustrated that they are not a lot of resources for Black, Indigenous and people of colour who are seeking mental health services. Unknown Speaker 8:04 Looking at, you know, the deaths that occurred recently, you know, the vast majority, if not all of them, were people of color, like I'm talking about Regis and Mr. Choudry, and Chantel Moore. There's just so many of these deaths could be prevented. And, you know, it brings a question like, do white people just not have crises? Or are they dealt with in a more compassionate manner? And why is this you know, and there's no doubt that there is a systemic oppression across, you know, different systems, such as the policing system that needs to be addressed. But, you know, on the topic of people of colour and their experiences with mental health, I do believe that, you know, it's something that needs to be talked about more. In western countries, there seem to have, you know, more of a conversation around mental health. But I find, you know, speaking for myself coming from an Asian community, it is still something that's very, very stigmatized, you know, people don't really talk about it, and it's seen as weak or, you know, dangerous if someone has mental health issues. And so, you know, from the start, I think we need to work within our own communities and kind of break through these kind of stigmas and especially towards, you know, the older generation and kind of talking to them about what mental health looks like and how everybody struggles with mental health sometimes and that it's not something that's dangerous. Unknown Speaker 9:36 Mental health issues are also a big problem for LGBT Asian people. LGBT, Asian folks are often not out to their families and suffer mentally as a result. A lot of resources for queer and trans people are often catered to white folks. This is a problem because Asian families have different dynamics compared to white families. Unknown Speaker 9:57 Very broadly in general, I'm concerned about people safety and mental health in a pandemic, because there's an increase in isolation, right? People are either going back to live with their families or people are alone in their apartments, seeing not a lot of folks, there's not the social structure that people may have had, where they could see their whole selves or be different parts of themselves. They're not really around in the same way. So in terms of folks that aren't out to their family, I'm definitely concerned about people who are living with their families who they're not out with right now. And what that means, cause they're, is not able to be your whole self worth, you know, families are homophobic, living in that space. Certainly, no good. So yeah, I would say that I'm concerned. Unknown Speaker 10:55 That was Jia Qing Wilson Yang. She is a Canadian writer and a specialist at Ryerson Office of sexual violence support and education. She has worked for many years with queer and trans people, and also has years of experience in outreach and facilitating workshops. A lot of her work centers around trans women survivors of sexual violence in Ontario, she also tries to amplify voices of trans women of colour. However, her work is significantly harder now during the pandemic. Unknown Speaker 11:27 It is tricky in terms of like the provision of supports, because we're, I think a lot of folks in roles like mine are trying to figure out ways to reach out and engage with people. And obviously, the engagement that we can do with folks to sort of combat that isolation and give people space safe spaces where they can give themselves is really limited. It's all happening online. Which has different, like, on the one hand, it's easier to cloak if I can use that term, like, because you're just like, well, I'm on a zoom meeting, or I'm, you know, connecting with friends on the internet, or this is for class, like, you can keep things private, if you have your own computer and Internet access. But then, for folks who don't have that access, or for folks who are really, you know, missing the actual connection with people, I think it's so difficult. Yeah, and in terms of like seeing lovers or friends, you know, it's it's that much harder. If you're living in a situation where you can't be out to your family or you need to bubble or you know, that isolation really does just compound for folks. Unknown Speaker 12:44 Jia Qing stresses the importance of sharing and amplifying resources that help LGBT Asian folks, especially immigrant LGBT Asians, many immigrants cannot speak English very well and rely on translated resources to find the support that they need Unknown Speaker 13:00 When we find things that are in written in a good way, sharing them with the people around us. I think, in this COVID context, where we're doing everything online, there is opportunity for us to come together and work on things, through things like Google Docs, or Facebook groups, or Insta groups or chats, I think, like as a community, we can come together and try and translate, try and translate some of those things or think about ways that we want to would want to talk to them about want to talk to our parents about that want to talk to our family about that. But also, I think, just having like, even if we can translate things directly for our families in ways that they're going to understand it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to land well, right. Like, even if they know exactly what you're talking about, it doesn't mean that they're going to be like, super accepting, or really thrilled that this is part of your life, right. So I think, again, like having those spaces where we're coming together to talk about how we would describe ourselves or how to properly you know, express queerness in our own languages. Even if we're not making headway with our family, that does give us the opportunity to talk about that. And I think connecting with like connecting with queer movements, and places like Hong Kong or Taiwan, those are coming to mind right away because I see more of that on the internet. But yeah, connecting with folks that are living and working in those languages and seeing how they're describing things I think is also a really helpful way. And for me, it's also like a nice reminder if that queerness isn't something that just happens in Canada. Unknown Speaker 14:59 But not everything thing is doom and gloom. There are a lot of resources on the internet out there for Asian people who are struggling with their mental health. For me, I finally found an Asian counselor that really clicks with me when I moved to Toronto. It took me a long time to get here. But life is a marathon, not a race. Unknown Speaker 15:29 That episode is so important, especially with this pandemic, where mental health is something we need to keep talking about. Thank you to Paula Tran for that contribution. And huge thanks to our executive producer Emily Morantz, associate producer Manuela Vega, artwork by Ben Shelley, theme music composed by John Powers. I've been your host Gracie Brison. And last but not least, huge shout out to Amanda Cupido, final season study break. And remember, fitting in is overrated.