Making Wellness A Two-Way Street: Learning from the Minority

In Tamil, my mother tongue, there is a unique word called ‘urimai’. It requires taking responsibility for someone because they belong to you. It’s a beautiful word of deep community.

I truly believe that dealing with mental health is a community project although we often treat it as an individual issue. No one exemplifies this more than many minority cultures.

Many sociologists speak of the two main kinds of cultures: the one found in the East and the one in the West (although this terminology can be a gross simplification of the diversity of cultures in various regions). The one in the West can be useful as it teaches us values like individual responsibility. However, it often falls short when it comes to community. That is where Eastern cultures come in. They emphasize the importance of living in community with friends and family.

My Indian culture has this same heritage. Everything is done in community. Times of celebrating and times of mourning; times of wealth and times of neediness; even times of silence and times of laughter. It is far from perfect and there are definitely downsides to this. However, I have come to see just how remarkable my culture can be as well.

When it comes to mental health, one of the best things we can do for ourselves is to stay immersed in this kind of Eastern community. It is a community that can support us and one where we can easily reach out for help. We do not have to be all alone in our struggles here.

Everyone needs to seek and receive the help they need. However, there are a few distinct challenges that BIPOC individuals face when it comes to mental health.

Isolation

Personally, although I have lived in the States for almost my entire life, my “Indianess” is often still all that people seem to see. I often wish that I could be seen as a person and not just as a brown girl. As a child, I especially disliked not being able to fit in and being brown instead of white. I started to have a personal vendetta against my Indianess which only seemed to mean isolation.

It’s not just me. This isolation is very common among BIPOC communities. Often, these communities are in spaces where everyone around them belongs to the majority culture. So, the minority cultures are ignored and isolated.

Isolation only adds to the other pains that many of these communities face. Along with the mental health needs that are present in every community, this isolation amplifies the struggle making mental wellness so much more important but also seemingly farther away.

Surviving Vs. Thriving

On the other hand, when speaking of positive mental health, the words flourishing and thriving are often used. They describe the ideal state of wellness. However, thriving is far away from the lives of many BIPOC.

This is due to multiple reasons. First of all, across the board, mental healthcare is viewed as more of a luxury than a need. Secondly, however, for communities that are already struggling with the tensions of poverty, the strains of immigration, and more, dealing with mental health becomes less of a concern.

For BIPOC communities where surviving is the main goal, thriving becomes an indulgence they can’t afford. This is a huge barrier to wellness.

Stigma, the Silent Barrier

Finally, as a member of the Indian-American and larger Asian-American communities, I have seen first-hand the lack of Asians interested in mental wellness. The Asian-American community has a deep-rooted stigma against seeking help and mental health issues. This stigma is prevalent in many cultures around the world but is amplified with the cultural values present. Therefore, many research studies indicate that Asian-Americans are the smallest people group to go to therapy in the States compared with their prevalence in the American population.

All BIPOC face this in different ways and to varying degrees. On top of isolation and the “luxury” mindset, stigma makes mental health awareness even more of an ignored topic. If this stigma isn’t addressed, mental health continues to be a taboo topic that isn’t dealt with.

Urimai, the Missing Factor

So, how can we move forward? I have come to believe that moving forward requires Urimai. It requires each of us caring about the communities around us to the point of being there for each other.

We must start being more accepting of each other and form communities where we do not isolate each other, but rather only incorporate each other into our lives. We must defeat the luxury mindset by making our minds and bodies a priority within our communities along with helping those in our communities survive and then thrive. We must speak up about our struggles and break down the stigma one conversation with a friend at a time. Relationships formed that openly talk about struggles are the best way to address stigma and to start the process of dealing with our mental health struggles.

At the end of the day, minority communities do face distinct challenges. However, mental health is not a one-way street where each of us tries to individually fix our problems and clean up our acts. It is rather a two-way street where we learn from every individual and community and come together stronger to heal and to deal with our struggles.

In the United States, we live in a unique mix of many cultures across the world. We have the privilege of being able to learn from the cultures around us. For many of us who are in multicultural families, we can even start with the cultures we were born into.

Instead of choosing to only be valuing individuality, we can begin to prioritize community. As we recognize the Eastern communities that are hurting and their culture of being communally alive, let’s step up in being personally hopeful to move towards a future of healing as we embrace our struggles on the two-way street to wellness.

If you have a story, resource, or string of thoughts worth sharing, feel free to reach out to mhc@asuc.org

Written by Carissa Samuel, External Department