PRANEEKA-
"If any part of our body is sick, we go to the doctor
But no one goes to the doctor when their mind is sick
As if the mind is not part of the body at all." --Shah Rukh Khan as Dr. Jehangir in Dear Zindagi
On January 27, 2013, Shreya’s parents informed my friends and me that Shreya* had “passed away due to unknown causes.”
What her parents did not tell us is that Shreya attempted suicide and succeeded. She killed herself.
Oh sorry, did I say the “s” word? Is it hard for you to stomach? Does it make you flinch a little bit? My question to you is: why? Why does it hurt to say words like suicide, depression, self-harm, and therapy? Why are we silent on these things when they are becoming increasingly common in our culture?
My friend was every Indian family's poster child; she was a beautiful, bright student who had plans to pursue a career in medicine and knew how to make everyone around her feel good about themselves. Everyone thought, why would such a perfect girl even think of ending her life? I read a news article about my friend’s mother answering a similar question and the following was her response:
“My daughter never told me anything. She never said anything about being depressed or any of that nonsense. The only mildly concerning thing she ever said was that she didn’t think her career path in becoming a doctor was right for her. That was solved though because [my husband and I] told her to keep going and push through. She was doing well the last time I checked, but now it’s all gone. We don’t know what to do or say. Our family back home [in India] doesn’t know about this yet, and we don’t know how to tell them. What are they going to think?” She fades off to a mumble, tears forming in her eyes.
I hope you found many problems with what this woman said. One. She dismissed the idea of depression in such a condescending manner. Two. Instead of properly addressing their child’s request for help, the parents continued to push the girl into doing something she did not wish to pursue. Three. She prioritized family reputation over her own daughter.
A few days after Shreya committed suicide, the police found Shreya’s journal and went through the text messages left on her phone. Her diary consisted of dark poems and doodles, and texts with friends included statements such as “my mind feels blank,” “I feel trapped,” and “I’m scared of my parents” scattered in their conversations. None of this evidence came as a surprise to me; I knew all about this side of Shreya. This girl was far from perfect! She regularly had panic attacks. Instead of becoming a doctor, she wanted to become a journalist. Her parents had more control of her life than she ever did. She didn’t magically change her outlook on life just like that, as her parents had claimed. Her mental health gradually deteriorated until she could take no more. It is horrible to say, but it all added up.
You might ask, why didn’t Shreya just ask for help? The answer lies in the ingrained behaviors that make up our community’s lifestyle. Mental health did not become a concern for many immigrant South Asians until they moved from their respective countries. In a 2004 study, an immigrant Indian woman subject exclaims, “We didn’t know what the meaning of depression was. We only heard about it, now here we know what the meaning of depression is.” The woman went on to explain how there is more accessibility to mental health services in the western world than there is back home: “In India we would only visit the doctor when we are sick. Here [in North America], even if you are healthy we still go for a checkup.” She also discusses South Asians’ affinity with using home remedies instead of seeking traditional medication because they are “uncomfortable with the notion of seeking medical help more regularly,” and would avoid burdening others. In a report from the US Surgeon General, it has been found that Asian Americans are “more likely to exhibit complaints of depression than are African Americans or whites, but Asians are thought to deny the experience and expression of emotions.” Due to this restricting stereotype, Asian Americans have “the lowest rates of utilization of mental health services among ethnic populations.” Rather than being emotionally honest, we would rather prefer silence and internalize our pain so we won’t be perceived as weak.
South Asians also subscribe to what is known as a model minority stereotype. Our community includes some of the highest-income, best-educated, and fastest-growing individuals in North America and places higher value on marriage, hard work, and career success compared to other Americans. High expectations are forced upon and extreme success stories are thrown as unrealistic comparisons at the future generations of South Asians. My brown friends, you know what I’m talking about. Vidhya got a National Academics Award for getting a perfect score on the math section of the SAT in seventh grade. Abhi took the MCAT two years early and is already in medical school. Sanjana got an MBA at Yale University and now earns $250k a year. Due to these sorts of extraordinary examples, their understanding of what most professions entail is skewed and now anecdotal. Raziman, a nanophotonics postdoc, states that South Asian parents “hear that so and so professions have good job security, earn enough money, and are well respected in society. Money, security, and status are buzzwords that every parent drools over. As a result, they tend to disregard their child’s passion as the stupidity of youth, and enforces their wishes on them.” Parents force their children into becoming cookie cutter copies of their exemplary peers, all eventually becoming doctors and engineers. They fail to understand that not all children can be thrown into this mass manufacturing of STEM career-focused professionals. Other jobs not relating to mathematics and science are looked down upon and are thought to not hold as high of a reputation in society. Much to our community’s disbelief, there are outstanding South Asian individuals in non-STEM fields, too! Just to name a few: Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, Hasan Minhaj, Dev Patel, Sameer Gadhia, Anchal Joseph, Pico Iyer, Padma Lakshmi, Norah Jones, Nav, Fareed Zakaria, Pooja Kumar. The list goes on and on. It is important for parents to realize and guide their children to do something they would enjoy for a long period of time. If they are forced to pursue a career they are not passionate about merely for the status and security, they will not be true to themselves for their rest of their lives and will eventually emotionally burn out.
In South Asian cultures, there are beliefs that drive this stigma of mental illness. For instance, it is presumed that mental illness occurs because individuals are too weak to deal with such problems and can be cured by free will. However, mental illnesses are like any other medical disorder: they cannot simply be controlled by the suffering individual. There is no way humans can attain perfection; we all have mental struggles. There is no value to you in staying silent about your pain and no shame in asking for professional help and/or medicine. Even if you may be perceived as weak or you are putting your reputation on the line to save yourself, I highly advise you to take action. My friend Shreya deserved the world in return for the things she did for me. Every day I regret not offering help when she needed it most, so this post is the least I can do for her. I use her story to shed light on how ignorant our community is in terms of aiding those with mental illness. Listed below are some online resources available for South Asians who need helpful information regarding mental health.
Please take care of yourself, my friends.
RESOURCES (thanks to reclaimthebindi):
*Name has been changed to protect subject’s confidentiality.
"If any part of our body is sick, we go to the doctor
But no one goes to the doctor when their mind is sick
As if the mind is not part of the body at all." --Shah Rukh Khan as Dr. Jehangir in Dear Zindagi
On January 27, 2013, Shreya’s parents informed my friends and me that Shreya* had “passed away due to unknown causes.”
What her parents did not tell us is that Shreya attempted suicide and succeeded. She killed herself.
Oh sorry, did I say the “s” word? Is it hard for you to stomach? Does it make you flinch a little bit? My question to you is: why? Why does it hurt to say words like suicide, depression, self-harm, and therapy? Why are we silent on these things when they are becoming increasingly common in our culture?
My friend was every Indian family's poster child; she was a beautiful, bright student who had plans to pursue a career in medicine and knew how to make everyone around her feel good about themselves. Everyone thought, why would such a perfect girl even think of ending her life? I read a news article about my friend’s mother answering a similar question and the following was her response:
“My daughter never told me anything. She never said anything about being depressed or any of that nonsense. The only mildly concerning thing she ever said was that she didn’t think her career path in becoming a doctor was right for her. That was solved though because [my husband and I] told her to keep going and push through. She was doing well the last time I checked, but now it’s all gone. We don’t know what to do or say. Our family back home [in India] doesn’t know about this yet, and we don’t know how to tell them. What are they going to think?” She fades off to a mumble, tears forming in her eyes.
I hope you found many problems with what this woman said. One. She dismissed the idea of depression in such a condescending manner. Two. Instead of properly addressing their child’s request for help, the parents continued to push the girl into doing something she did not wish to pursue. Three. She prioritized family reputation over her own daughter.
A few days after Shreya committed suicide, the police found Shreya’s journal and went through the text messages left on her phone. Her diary consisted of dark poems and doodles, and texts with friends included statements such as “my mind feels blank,” “I feel trapped,” and “I’m scared of my parents” scattered in their conversations. None of this evidence came as a surprise to me; I knew all about this side of Shreya. This girl was far from perfect! She regularly had panic attacks. Instead of becoming a doctor, she wanted to become a journalist. Her parents had more control of her life than she ever did. She didn’t magically change her outlook on life just like that, as her parents had claimed. Her mental health gradually deteriorated until she could take no more. It is horrible to say, but it all added up.
You might ask, why didn’t Shreya just ask for help? The answer lies in the ingrained behaviors that make up our community’s lifestyle. Mental health did not become a concern for many immigrant South Asians until they moved from their respective countries. In a 2004 study, an immigrant Indian woman subject exclaims, “We didn’t know what the meaning of depression was. We only heard about it, now here we know what the meaning of depression is.” The woman went on to explain how there is more accessibility to mental health services in the western world than there is back home: “In India we would only visit the doctor when we are sick. Here [in North America], even if you are healthy we still go for a checkup.” She also discusses South Asians’ affinity with using home remedies instead of seeking traditional medication because they are “uncomfortable with the notion of seeking medical help more regularly,” and would avoid burdening others. In a report from the US Surgeon General, it has been found that Asian Americans are “more likely to exhibit complaints of depression than are African Americans or whites, but Asians are thought to deny the experience and expression of emotions.” Due to this restricting stereotype, Asian Americans have “the lowest rates of utilization of mental health services among ethnic populations.” Rather than being emotionally honest, we would rather prefer silence and internalize our pain so we won’t be perceived as weak.
South Asians also subscribe to what is known as a model minority stereotype. Our community includes some of the highest-income, best-educated, and fastest-growing individuals in North America and places higher value on marriage, hard work, and career success compared to other Americans. High expectations are forced upon and extreme success stories are thrown as unrealistic comparisons at the future generations of South Asians. My brown friends, you know what I’m talking about. Vidhya got a National Academics Award for getting a perfect score on the math section of the SAT in seventh grade. Abhi took the MCAT two years early and is already in medical school. Sanjana got an MBA at Yale University and now earns $250k a year. Due to these sorts of extraordinary examples, their understanding of what most professions entail is skewed and now anecdotal. Raziman, a nanophotonics postdoc, states that South Asian parents “hear that so and so professions have good job security, earn enough money, and are well respected in society. Money, security, and status are buzzwords that every parent drools over. As a result, they tend to disregard their child’s passion as the stupidity of youth, and enforces their wishes on them.” Parents force their children into becoming cookie cutter copies of their exemplary peers, all eventually becoming doctors and engineers. They fail to understand that not all children can be thrown into this mass manufacturing of STEM career-focused professionals. Other jobs not relating to mathematics and science are looked down upon and are thought to not hold as high of a reputation in society. Much to our community’s disbelief, there are outstanding South Asian individuals in non-STEM fields, too! Just to name a few: Aziz Ansari, Mindy Kaling, Hasan Minhaj, Dev Patel, Sameer Gadhia, Anchal Joseph, Pico Iyer, Padma Lakshmi, Norah Jones, Nav, Fareed Zakaria, Pooja Kumar. The list goes on and on. It is important for parents to realize and guide their children to do something they would enjoy for a long period of time. If they are forced to pursue a career they are not passionate about merely for the status and security, they will not be true to themselves for their rest of their lives and will eventually emotionally burn out.
In South Asian cultures, there are beliefs that drive this stigma of mental illness. For instance, it is presumed that mental illness occurs because individuals are too weak to deal with such problems and can be cured by free will. However, mental illnesses are like any other medical disorder: they cannot simply be controlled by the suffering individual. There is no way humans can attain perfection; we all have mental struggles. There is no value to you in staying silent about your pain and no shame in asking for professional help and/or medicine. Even if you may be perceived as weak or you are putting your reputation on the line to save yourself, I highly advise you to take action. My friend Shreya deserved the world in return for the things she did for me. Every day I regret not offering help when she needed it most, so this post is the least I can do for her. I use her story to shed light on how ignorant our community is in terms of aiding those with mental illness. Listed below are some online resources available for South Asians who need helpful information regarding mental health.
Please take care of yourself, my friends.
RESOURCES (thanks to reclaimthebindi):
- Self-Care Masterpost
- Suicide Prevention Lifeline
- SAMHAA
- MySahana
- SAMHAJ
- CHAI
- South Asian Network (SAN)
- Heart Mind International
- MannMukti
*Name has been changed to protect subject’s confidentiality.
