Mental Health Awareness

South Asia

Abstract

Widely across the South Asian community, mental health issues remain shrouded in stigma, with many families struggling to even acknowledge their existence, let alone provide the necessary support. Cultural norms, lack of awareness, and deep-rooted expectations have created a landscape where mental illness is often brushed aside as ‘laziness’ or ‘weakness of character.’ These values remain in South Asian immigrants, denoting familial communication regarding mental health as a complicated and stingy topic. Elizabeth J. Kramer, clinical epidemiologist and medical writer at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center in New York, and her colleagues, explain factors that cause the negligence of mental health care in Asian Americans, such as social stigma, shame around the topic, and maintaining high familial dignity and reputation, preventing Asians from seeking care (Kramer et. al. 2002). Such evaluation brings up the question: how can the lack of mental health awareness in South Asian cultures be shifted to improve immigrants’ lifestyles? Through implementation of awareness programs in South Asian educational institutes and culture-sensitive therapy, emerging from increased governmental funding, immigrant families can grasp positive mental health practices from their childhood and carry those values out of their country of origin.