Week 6 - Lauren Velasquez

Lauren Velasquez

Week 6

Section A03

Many people view Asian Americans as smart, high-achieving, and successful, but many do not recognize the struggles that result from that. Mental health is a very taboo topic in Asian Americans, especially with immigrant parents. The article, “On Some College Campuses, A Focus on Asian American Mental Health” by New American Media, unboxes why Asian Americans have disproportionately higher suicide rates in university students than other ethnicities. Many Asian-Americans “have this narrative that their families gave up everything to come to this country and worked so hard to give them this opportunity.” Many Asian American students have the mindset that “our parents are doing this for us and it is our job to repay them by becoming a doctor or engineer” (Kam, 2013.) Students feel obligated to do good in classes because of this. Many Asian immigrants come from the 4th wave of immigration to America, which is the more recent wave of immigration to America. Many of the Asian American immigrants are “recently immigrated,” compared to white people, even African Americans, whose families has been in the United States for generations. This means that many of the Asian-American children are first generation and are facing these struggles today. The Asian-American students are indirectly taking the path that their parents want them to take, not because the students are passionate for it. This perpetuates the feelings that the students are not good enough and will become failures. One profile that New American Media captured was a young man from Thailand who came to America for education. He received a government scholarship to study civil engineering, but it was a subject he did not particularly enjoy. He felt a lot of pressure because “his family was counting on him… everyone in his village knew him” (Kam, 2013.) This places a huge amount of stress on someone who was forced into their major and has everyone counting on a single individual, especially if the major is something that they are not passionate about or something that they are bad at. It is a universal Asian value to honor your elders, which makes this even more stressful.

The image below shows a stereotype of American kids versus Chinese kids. This comic shows that the Asian student's brain is only comprised of school-related things and embodying the "model minority stereotype."

Question: How do we lower suicide rates for Asian-American students?

Kam, K. (2013, September 13). On Some College Campuses, A Focus On Asian American Mental Health. New America Media. Retrieved from http://newamericamedia.org/2013/09/on-some-college-campuses-a-focus-on-asian-american-mental-health.php

The Effect of Model Minority on the Model Minority [Cartoon]. (n.d.). Retrieved May 7, 2017, from https://stjohns.digication.com/eng1000c_investigation_3_model_minority/Digital_Text