Cynthia Lee

During the last month of my internship with Professor Dr. Keng-Yen Huang on Asian American adolescent/ young adults’ mental health issues, I’m planning a workshop for AA adolescent/ young adults from 16 to 21 years old, talking about their experience in race and identity-related stressors and how they think it influences their mental health.

Traditional models of Asian American racial identity development present it as a multiple-stage process that begins with unawareness and ends with integrating identity with other identities through exploration, knowledge acquisition, and race-related experiences (Alvarez, 2002; Kim, 1981). Kim (1981) proposes a model of five sequential stages, including ethnic awareness, white identification, social-political consciousness, and incorporation of a positive identity as an Asian American, but bases his model focused on the experiences of third-generation Japanese American women. Alvarez (2002) later applied Helm’s People of Color racial identity model (1995) to Asian American students, focusing on potential challenges and supports at each of the six stages (e.g., conformity, immersion, and emersion). Other scholars have proposed that certain groups experience a different ethnic identity development, such as a non-linear model for Filipino Americans and a multidimensional framework that incorporates various social identities across education to gender to understand South Asian American identity (Ibrahim, 1997; Nadal, 2004). 

Studies on Asian American ethnic-racial socialization and identity development demonstrate the complexities of identifying panethnically. Some Asian Americans prefer to identify with ethnic-specific identity and interconnectedness with other social identities, such as gender and faith.

Although Asian American panethnicity was intended to reflect their shared history of oppression via white supremacy, some Asian Americans struggle to identify with a term that has become synonymous with “East Asian,” which then impacts one’s willingness to identify as Asian American. For example, Yamashita (2022), who interviewed 62 Southeast Asian refugees and service providers, found that “quiet neglect,” or the institutional silence of U.S. militaristic involvement in Southeast Asians, and the neglect of SEA needs contributes to some SEAAs choosing to adapt labels– across ethnicity and SEAA-panethnicity– that better

suit them. Similarly, Young et al. (2022), who interviewed 12 Asian American emerging adults on racial identity amidst increased racial violence, reported that participants, particularly those not East Asian, identified more with ethnicity or religion than Asian Americans. Asian American identity development across sexuality was proposed to interact with each other due to having parallel processes– of acceptance, understanding of identity-related marginalization, and integration of identity with other social identities- and the connection between ethnic and sexual identity attitudes (Chung and Katayama, 1998).

To look into the growing-up experience of the second or third AA generation, we decided to plan a series of storytelling workshops for AA adolescents/ young adults. Why are stories important? Telling stories can help us to understand ourselves in a new way. Listening to stories can help us understand others in new ways too. Nevertheless, all too often, especially for people of color, there are little stories – stories that can create and perpetuate stereotypes. In the TED talk delivered by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she talked about the danger of a single story. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

“All of these stories make me who I am. However, to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and overlook the many other stories that formed me. The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” – Adichie.

From the TED talk above, we know that stereotypes and unconscious bias significantly impact our thinking. However, by developing our abilities in storytelling, we can find what is missing – tellings stories helps to fill in incomplete stories. 

There is another TED talk by Canwen Xu about her experience being an “Asian stereotype” and learning how to tell our stories to heal and challenge stereotypes and biases. On the other hand, we believe that storytelling is also a way to represent social justice. We have been talking about how different vital stories are to understanding ourselves and each other to cope and heal. We can pay attention to whether or not we have only been hearing ONE story. Moreover, intentionally seek out different perspectives and different people’s stories. Listening with open hearts is a crucial part of social justice.

Our next step is to prepare more materials for the workshops and, at the same time, figure out how to create social media contents that attract young AA adolescent to join in. 

The last two weeks working with Dr. Keng-Yen Huang on Asian American adolescent/ young adults’ mental health issues gave me a basic sense of the difficulties they faced during their growing up and the pressure they faced from their own culture and society. For research and intervention development, we plan to hold workshops focusing on the intervention of Asian American adolescents/ young adults’ mental health issues by talking about their growing up backgrounds, culture and accompanying them.

Through the brainstorming of the workshop, we are discussing what kind of intervention suits the group better. However, before doing the intervention workshops, we should have more understanding of the Asian American adolescents/ young adults and their journey of identification of themselves and their culture.

Several factors influence the stressors of racial development in Asian Americans, contributing positively to racial and ethnic identity. Through interviewing the young adult and literature reviews, environment-place and geographical context, family dynamics, and biculturalism are three main factors.

As for the environment-place and geographical context, the identity of whom they come from, and their hometown, the young adult usually have access to cultural knowledge, often from parents and home environment, compared to access to ethnic churches and language schools that helped reinforce a connection to culture and seeing race as a cultural construct. Also, their social environment plays an important role, including whom they hang out with and the group they have been with during their grown-up times. Change in context (e.g., a more diverse college) can lead to new experiences with race and racial identity. Examples of demographic changes include a sizeable Asian population and ethnic and generational diversity. It functions as a more open place for discussing race and racial identity, challenges previous understandings, and compels students to question their definition of Asian American. For example, racial socialization among peers; discussing stereotyping with dormmates instead of family members.

For family dynamics, intergenerational knowledge and sharing history (particularly trauma) significantly influence stressors development. Critical consciousness, defined as “a reflexive understanding of the world and recognition of the interconnectedness of individualism, social, and structural experience,” is necessary to heal from historical trauma and fight against systems of oppression—also close family relationships and a stronger sense of and regard for ethnic community. Asian American youth reported more pride in their racial-ethnic identity and social connectedness with parents who taught them about their heritage culture and treated everyone equally regardless of background. Protects from psychological stress for those who have experienced racial discrimination.

Last biculturalism; refers to immigrant youth involved with two cultures. Bicultural competencies are the flexibility in navigating across and identifying with both cultures. E.g., through cultural celebrations, speaking both languages. Youth who demonstrate cultural frame switching can switch between cultural orientations depending on the context, which makes it easier to identify with both cultures. Moreover, for decreased parent-child conflicts, take Korean American college students as an example, greater adherence to ethnic culture is associated with less intensity of family conflict.

During my first two weeks working with Dr. Keng-Yen Huang on several research projects on Asian American mental health behavior and intervention, I found it interested in looking into the framework of health literacy and how health communication methods influence health behavior among minority groups. These projects focus more on adolescent/ young adults’ mental health in minority groups, and lots of articles and studies mention that social media and their peers greatly influence the mental health situation among young adults.

Adolescents are usually strongly influenced by their peers and social media platforms. Within a strong sense of “fear of missing out” and seeking group acceptance, they tend to receive lots of pressure when using social media. Especially when it goes to social comparison and pressure to stay connected, their mental health condition worsens under peer pressure, and they tend to suffer from anxiety and depression. The situation gets worse among Asian American adolescents due to their living pressure not only from their peers but also from their families.

To know more about how Asian American students/ young adults suffer from depression and anxiety in their lives, we develop representative stories for 1st and 2nd generation Asian American adolescents/young adults of diverse backgrounds to understand their mental health challenges) using the human-centered design/method. Through interviewing and persona development, we found that Asian American young adults tend to receive colossal pressure from their peers and their families. They show that juggling different roles, expectations, and identities lead to feelings of being an outsider and, consequently, inner conflict. Also, after looking into their lives and stories, we found that young adults need to learn to be true to themselves despite shifting between different contexts and roles to reduce role conflict. They also need support navigating through their beliefs/expectations, developing better communication skills to advocate their needs to their parents, and improving the parent-child relationship. Especially when the parents have different frameworks of success than their children, the depression and anxiety get worse.

My next step will be researching health communication on social media and content design, looking into what kind of content will influence young adults more and what health communication method is more accepted among adolescents. Overall, we would like to design and hold community workshops for Asian American young adults talking about their depression on using social media and experiencing the Anti-Asian conflicts under the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cynthia Lee/ NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health/ New York, NY

Hello, I am Cynthia, a first-year graduate student from the School of Global Public Health, studying health policy and management. 

Since my undergrad degree, being a global health study student, health rights and accessibility to affordable health care is always issues I’m focusing on. 

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been a global pandemic since 2019, and it is still ongoing at this point. During the pandemic around 2020-2021, several studies have found racial disparities in access to health care, with a disproportionate share of the COVID-19 mortality and morbidity burden being borne by racial and ethnic minorities. Many studies have focused on COVID-19-related health disparities experienced by Black and Hispanic Americans, but Asian Americans are one of the lesser-noticed groups. That is to say, for Asian Americans, language barriers and the gap between information and resource sending are always an issue in the community. Not to mention mental health works among minorities and Asian American children and their families. 

I am interested in knowing what kind of government obligations exist under human rights law to address COVID-19-related health disparities experienced by Asian Americans and what enforcement mechanisms exist against the U.S. government.

I’m going to work with Dr. Keng-Yen Huang, the Associate Professor of Population Health and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine, working on several projects related to the NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health. 

So most of the research I’m joining will focus on mental health intervention projects for minority children and their families. The projects include implementation strategy development to broaden child mental health knowledge dissemination and evidence-based intervention utilization in diverse community-based organizations and pediatric service settings where Asian American families are most likely to seek services.

Through my work during the summer, I would like to work deep into the health disparity issue among Asian Americans and have a chance to walk myself into the community and talk to family face to face to know about the difficulties they face during the difficult time of the pandemic.