Why Asian Culture DOES NOT BELIEVE in Mental Health Therapy

A new study from the CDC reveals that Asian American children receive the least amount of mental health treatment of any type of child in America. Now let's talk about the reasons why that might be and if it should be a concern of yours. Yeah, this is going viral. It goes viral every time we talk about it. Whether it's the children using mental health treatment the least or Asian American adults using mental health treatments the least. Both of these are true because, Andrew, guess what? Asian American culture, I guess Asian culture in general, does not fully believe in mental health. Should that change? Some people say yes, some people say no. And there's a bunch of comments in the middle, so we're going to cover those, get into our takeaway. So make sure you like, subscribe, and turn on your notifications. Andrew, but real quick, some people say there are some reasons why young Asians 5 to 17 might have mental health issues. Yeah, what are the reasons, David? Oh, by the way, guys, we did try to do some research for this video, so we got some numbers and stats coming up. Parental pressure to succeed in academics. Okay. Discussing mental health concerns is considered taboo in many Asian cultures. Pressure to live up to the model minority stereotype. Family obligations based on strong traditional cultural values. Discrimination due to racial or cultural background. And difficulty in balancing two different cultures and developing a bicultural sense of self. Essentially, I would boil it down to family pressures and not fitting into society. Yeah, so real quick, Andrew, what are some stats that you want to address? Because a lot of people are going to point to the stat that suicide for certain age ranges of Asian Americans is the number one cause of death amongst certain age ranges of Asian Americans. Yeah, so the overall suicide rate for Asian Americans is actually still half of the national average. So, you know, I know that's a morbid thing to think about for a second, but let's just talk about it that Asians are still doing, I guess, relatively okay in that department. Although, for a certain age group, it seems to be the number one cause of death. But I also think that's because it gets moved up because the other causes of death... You are saying the homicide overdose rate is so low, it pushes suicide up to the top of the list. Right, right. It's not that high. But I'm not saying Asian kids are not depressed. Guys, we on the channel have talked about before. I do think that especially Asian adults need to look into mental health if they feel like they need to seek it. It is more accessible now than ever. It's more affordable now than ever. And there are more Asian therapists. If you want an Asian therapist, there's more Asian therapists in America than ever. But do the kids need it? That's a huge debate. Now, the kids, that's a different thing because I think a lot of parents or a lot of older Asians, a lot of millennial Asians might agree that some Asians do need mental health, but maybe the kids don't need it as bad. But we'll get into those reasons later. They got all them kids on vodka dents. That's why everything's crashing to the floor. This is the first comment that says, hey, but that means 95.6% of us don't get it, which means we got another A. Are you happy, mom and dad? Are you happy? Of course, that was a joke about what? The mental health issues being caused by high expectations, Asian Confucian parenting. If you haven't noticed, guys, 4.4% of Asian American children receive mental health treatment. But that still doesn't shock me. Some Asian Americans said, this is partly why I was never diagnosed as a child with autism or ADHD. Yes, my schizophrenia diagnosis came many years too late because my parents would never take me because they do not believe in mental health checkups. Yeah, this is definitely one of the drawbacks. I do think mental health checkups should be something that you're probably required to do at least a couple times when you're growing up. We got to normalize this discussion around because I feel really bad for these people if they were missing out on treatment for like five years when they needed it five years ago. Because who knows, that means that five years was lived in potentially mental torment. I also don't believe like immediately going to medicine and pills because then that means if you're like a kid, if you get diagnosed at 12, think about it, then you're on pills for like decades of your life. That could not be good for you. Somebody said, we Asians don't need therapy. We just suppress our issues deep, deep into the very void of our psyche and pass down our generational trauma onto our children or our cats. Guys, I don't want to overlook some of the recent tragedies in the past year that were committed by Asians in America. Obviously who had mental health issues. So I think that, let's be clear. I think Asians do need to think more about it. Okay. Obviously then the current status quo, we need to increase the talking about it. And that's what even this video is designed to do. Somebody said, forget psych meds, the cultural stigma around getting talk therapy, psychotherapy alone is huge in the Asian American community. This is a problem. This is Andrew, you're talking about no pills. There's this person saying that even just getting talk-based therapy is frowned upon in the Asian world. Yeah. I mean, think about it. Asian American adults are also the least likely to receive mental health treatment. So of course the children are. So it's the status, not the same, just because we're focusing on the children in this video. That's what this article is about. It's actually just Asians in general just don't get it. Let me just say this as an aside, Andrew. And I know a lot of people are like, you know what? I'm just going to talk to my friend. That's a one good listener. Your friend that is a good listener is not a trained professional. I don't know. But David, how much do you think it is that a lot of the therapy and mental health treatment in America is geared in English and a lot of parents are not super fluent in English, actually? So there's like already that language barrier. There are more in-language Asian therapists, by the way. I don't think there's a lot of mental health therapy, whether you're talking about psychotherapy or medicinal therapy, even in Asia, though. So I actually think it's more of a cultural thing. But you're right. Yeah, had they had more in-language resources, more people would for sure. I don't know how much that percentage increase would be ratio-wise, though. Somebody said, Stephen Youn said it the best in beef. Western medicine doesn't work on Eastern minds. Is this true? Do you agree? Yes or no? No, I think your mind can become more Western as the longer you're here. I think for me as an American born, I don't think I think completely American, but I think I would almost consider my mind a Western mind. I'm a Western mind. Yeah, I mean, if you're born and raised in America, yes, you may have traits about you that are more Eastern than a full Western person, but you're going to be more Western than Eastern. I have a Western mind mostly. And I remember there was old jokes back in the day when America was all white that like only Anglos, psychotherapy worked on Anglos and not on Irish because Irish were so like unemotional. That was like an old stereotype from the 1920s. Somebody said, Asian parents simply do not believe in mental health. That's why. I think it's changing and it should change. But I do think that Asian parents would like to believe that they could just like kind of push it out of their kid or work it out of their kid. And you know, the truth is all the kids that get diagnosed with mental diseases or mental illness, I'm sorry, in America, some of them need it and some of them do not need it. So obviously parents are just trying to hope that their kids are one of the ones where it's like they do not need it. Yeah, I heard physical activity in sports is really, really good for the mental. Obviously, I believe in that, too. So I think that's something that Asian parents should think about more. Somebody said, This is why suicide is an epidemic in our community. Suicide is the leading cause of death for Asian youth. This is the only race where suicide is the number one cause. Yes, like we said, that stat sounds startling. But there is a comment that replied, which is true because I just I looked up the facts. He said, Wrong info. Asian-American suicide rate is actually still very low. The highest rate is actually Native Americans, which has been constantly a Native American. So what I'm saying is, although it ranks number one as the reason, it is still actually really low relative to other groups of people. That's all I'm saying. Right. Somebody says, Who says that whites being over-medicated is the norm that we need to adapt to? Basically saying, Well, why do you want to tell Asian kids to start popping pills like little Billy and Becky over there hopped up on what God knows what Zoloft when they're eight or whatever? Do you think it's like, you know how a lot of Asians like to kind of do preventative medicine or like, you know, TCM or kind of like natural medicine, like just live a proper life and a healthy lifestyle and you don't need to get surgery and get all the muscle and do all this thing and get all the medicine. Asian medicine for sure is more preventative because the medicine dosages are not that strong. Yeah, and also it's about living like a healthier lifestyle and like eating right. So I guess like I think what Asians could adopt is trying to push their kids in a natural way to do the things that fight against mental health issues, which is certain things like get outside more, have friends, social things or sports things. I mean, somebody would say that those are more old-school remedies, right? Somebody said, Don't you think that the US is over-diagnosed and over-medicated literally just to bring bigger margins and bigger profits to Big Pharma because Big Pharma just wants to make more money off your kid being declared crazy and needing pills. Somebody said Asian parents, even poor ones, do a better job raising their children. So this is a comment from a non-Asian person saying, I don't know, sure seems like you guys have good macro stats. I have no reason to believe that your children need to be on pills. Yeah, the macro stats are that Asians, Asians, which is a big group, by the way, when you're encompassing all Asians, but Asians generally have a higher income, higher education, lower divorce rate in the family. I'm not saying there's not poor Asians, and I'm not saying there's not Asians who want to get divorced, but I'm just saying these are the macro stats when you clump all Asians together. So I guess what I'm saying is that, yeah, I mean, I'm not saying Asians are doing great, but I think they're doing okay. But do you think the one area of opportunity that Asians have is the happiness metric? Because let's say, for example, on HDI, like Human Development Index indicators, Asians in the macro do well, but in the micro, some Asians have this sense of like, man, I'm just not as happy as my white friend or my black friend or my Latino friend. Yeah, but I think it's, no, and I think Asians could do a better job of being happier, like I said, but I think that happiness is all relative, right? If your happiness bar, if it takes you this much to be happy, guess what, you can just want this much and you can still be happy. Or also just note that being Asian in America and being happy as a good-looking, privileged white person or something, it's just very tough to have that feeling, right? It is, it is. If you chase that, if you chase what your one privileged friend has who's like born into old money, good luck. Yeah, and if you want to keep chasing dopamine, that is a dangerous path to go down because you're going to end up doing drugs. You're going to end up doing it, so I don't know. I think that's a different conversation, but you guys let us know in the comments down below what you think. I think specifically being Chinese, which is like known as a particularly, I don't want to say like not happy race, or like some people even on the downside, Andrew, call Chinese like a perpetually miserable group of people. I don't know. It's definitely like, it's just how the culture is, but I think we could do a better job being balanced. For sure, Filipinos seem more in tune with Latino or Western happiness for sure. What I would be interested in seeing is, I guess, depression or I guess suicide rate stats broken down by economics and ethnicity, a little bit more specific, right? Because like I'm not going to say, I'm not going to assume just because Filipinos generally are more joyful or seem to have more life in them that a lot of them are not depressed too. I wouldn't say that. I don't know. I don't know, man. No, but I'm saying like everybody can feel bad and everybody can still commit suicide. That's on the table for everybody. No, it's true. It's true. It's very complicated. I'm not an expert in this field. Yeah, I guess I'm just saying it's tough to tell, but I guess what I'm saying is for a lot of the people watching, to hear that Asian children receive the least amount of mental health treatment does not shock me. Right, but why are some people sad about that and why are some people happy that that is though? Well, I think some people see it as an achievement that the score, that the number's not very high, which I guess is a good thing. However, it probably does mean that probably Asians need a little bit more thought about this. You know what it is? I think Asians need a lot more psychotherapy, aka talk therapy, but I do not think that we should increase the physical pill therapy at all. Oh. Like I said, I don't know, but for sure, psychotherapy, we need a lot of it. Oh, you against big pharma. Hey, man, I'm just against popping, you know, blue and yellow purple pills. I don't know. All right. All right, everybody, let us know in the comments down below, do these statistics kind of concern you or is it just like a number and there's more stories to the number? What are some things that you would like to suggest that Asian families should do to battle mental health maybe naturally? I have one last recommendation. I think Asian Americans could invent Asian mental health. Maybe we understand the brain more technically for all its valves and chambers and insulin and endorphins and serotonin and dopamine, and we just understand more of the valves like a tourbillion watch, you know what I mean, like the watch faces that are clear where we could see all the mechanisms and that way that's like our way of doing it because, you know, Asians are more, you know, engineering technical minded, obviously, especially, you know, certain types of Asians and like, I don't know. I think that that could resonate with the community more and then that understanding of that fundamental like math can help them adopt the psychotherapy. Hey, let us know in the comments down below what you think. Again, we do see mental health as a serious thing. I do want to reiterate that, yes, there are a lot of Asian therapists out there. It's more affordable now. There's tons of apps. I don't know. If you're feeling like you need some help, go talk to somebody professionally. Get an Asian therapist. Yes. That's my recommendation. But anyways, guys, thank you so much for watching that video. Hit that like button. Check out more episodes of the Hot Paw Boys and until next time, we out. Peace.