Asian Mental Health
While grading the CS211 prelim, we TA’s saw advertisements for a seminar on Asian Mental Health which claimed 1/2 of suicides at Cornell University were committed by Asian males. The numbers seemed too high, the race issue to laughably strong, so we joked about it, and rewrote the headers to read “half of all singles at Cornell are Asian males.” But when the next day’s issue of The Cornell Daily Sun came out, we weren’t laughing as much anymore.
Wai Kwong Wong, Ph.D., held a lecture addressing health concerns in the Asian community last Thursday. According to Wong, who works for CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services), 50 percent of suicides at Cornell come from a mere 17% of the population. Asian students are more likely to experience stress, relationship trouble, and abuse, and less likely to do anything about it, he said. The genius stereotype, generation gaps in the family, and what Wong termed “conceptual invisibility” play a huge role in Asian mental health on campus.
The solution he offers? Seek help when you need it.
If you’re not the only one unsatisfied with this idea, brainstorm in the comments. To me, “seeking help when you need it” is a symptomatic treatment that soothes the pain caused by racism and culture shock without actually getting to the heart of the problem. For some reason, Asian students are pressured differently than other Cornell students. A better solution, I think, would be to probe the reasons why, and try and alleviate some of the external pressures that our Asian students face.
Cross posted to the Asia Blog
| This entry was posted on Sunday, March 13th, 2005 at 1:49 am and is tagged with stress relationship, cornell students, generation gaps, relationship trouble, cornell university, cs211, heart of the problem, addressing health, asian students, culture shock, asian males, external pressures, symptomatic treatment, asian community, daily sun, psychological services, better solution, health concerns, brainstorm, last thursday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
4 Responses to “Asian Mental Health”
Leave a Reply
The problem is multi-faceted. Dr. Wong actually founded a Task Force that I served on for a semester — and has been trying to tackle this problem for over 3 years now.
But the task is pretty huge — not only is the problem complex, but we have to figure out how to combat a whole cultural resistance to seeking help for mental issues.
It is a very complex problem with no immediate solution. Perhaps the approach can start by changing the way most Asians view counseling, which is often tied to feelings of shame. As with other cultures, many problems are supposed to be dealt within the family and there is dishonour involved when seeking outside help, especially if the problem is seen as a reflection of the family. Multicultural training for counselors can make them more approachable and sensitive to students’complaints. For instance, many multicultural students may voice a present complaint that is physical, i.e., not sleeping well or having headaches instead of a more personal and emotional complaint.
It is a very complex problem with no immediate solution. Perhaps the approach can start by changing the way most Asians view counseling, which is often tied to feelings of shame. As with other cultures, many problems are supposed to be resolved within the family and there is dishonour involved when seeking outside help, especially if the problem is seen as a reflection of the family. Multicultural training for counselors can make them more approachable and sensitive to students’ complaints. For instance, many multicultural students may voice a present complaint that is physical, i.e., not sleeping well or having headaches instead of a more personal and emotional complaint.
good outlook