Week 6: Jasmine Vu

Thao-Nhi “Jasmine” Vu

A02

Week 6: Pathologizing of Asian Americans and the Americanization of Mental Illness and Other

My sister is diagnosed with ADHD, depression, and anxiety. It started with my mother and a DSM-V; now, she’s on an ever-changing laundry list of pills meant to make her “better”. Make her “healthy”. Let her “do well”. My parents, Viet refugees with lingering faith in the Western world for salvation, espouse to her that it’ll be the medicine that helps. When she’s upset or acts out, the first thing my dad asks is, “Have you taken your medication?” My parents rely on my sister’s pills more than she does; meanwhile, my sister texts me, and it’s all the same: she’s tired, she’s sluggish, she can’t focus. At times, she tells me she feels like she can’t recognize anything really, only “shapes and figures”. My mom’s had her medications switched several times in the past few months; she’s constantly adjusting and readjusting. Where is her healing? How is this making her better?

This week’s readings deal with the topic of Asian Americans and mental health. No, we don’t have higher suicide rates. We’re under just as much stress as any other ethnicity; why are we scapegoated as “victims” to mental illness? The reason is twofold. First, Western view of mental health is that it is dealt with using medication and therapy. To be “culturally sensitive”, they good-heartedly train their psychiatrists to be open-minded and learn to adapt to the attitudes of Asian Americans. However, this is what Ethan Watters warns against in his article The Americanization of Mental Illness: in our eagerness to help, we overlook the existing manifestations of mental illness and their treatments in other cultures.

If the problem is in mentality, and mentality is shaped by culture, does it not make sense that mental problems with present themselves differently in different cultures? Consequently, should the treatments not be different? As Watters writes, “the expectations and beliefs of the sufferer shape their suffering”. As I read this, I remembered learning about dance mania in a class winter quarter, which had happened exclusively in Europe from 1300-1600. Why had issues like this phased out? Because of shifts in culture! If we continue our Western → Eastern education of mental “illness” and medication being the end-all, we damage how people already cope and seek help. It can also affect how we perceive them. If we see the issue as more of a disease, we tend to pathologize the individual and actually treat them as lesser. Before my sister was medicated, my parents would try and talk to her to understand problems; now, they just ask her if she’s taken her medicine. Science and technology are not culture-blind.

My question is, how do we maintain these culture-specific treatments and ideas abroad? Unlike transnationalism, you can’t really go back to your secondary country and have your mentality adjust.

For further reference on how other cultures view mental health and illnesses, I've included a short documentary which includes experience of indigenous peoples in North America. Around the 13:00 mark, they begin discussing how to fill the "void" left by mental health experiences by replacing it with cultural experiences and traditions.

Resources

1. Watters, E. (2010). The Americanization of Mental Illness. The New York Times.
2. Echo-Hawk, H. (2011). Culture Matters: Indigenous Perspectives on Behavioral Healthcare. Washington: Wide Angle Studios