Understanding Mental Illness in Immigrant Families

Mental health is undeniably important to discuss amongst all teenagers, regardless of background or status. Yet, for all the time I’ve talked about the topic with my friends, I have noticed a pattern that has become increasingly prevalent as the years have passed. That is, my friends who are first-generation Americans—i.e., the children of immigrants—often express more mental woes compared to my friends with American-born parents. Why is this so? I think that it is not that being born to immigrants inherently means you will experience more stress or mental pressure, but rather that a multitude of factors culminate to create an odd phenomenon for first-gen children. 

First, there is the glaring issue of language. A language barrier, prevalent in an overwhelming amount of immigrant families, hinders the ability to communicate. It is naturally much harder to express one’s feelings, let alone one’s feelings about a subject as sensitive as mental health, when one has to use their secondary language to do so. I myself have been in this dreaded situation too many times to count. There’s so much I want to get off my chest, but I know if I speak in English I won’t be understood; so my speech just turns into a linguistic mess of English and Russian, where I am again not understood. What I truly want to convey is lost to deaf ears.

This proves to be a massive obstacle. Here at MyKahani, we encourage people to communicate openly and freely about mental health, but what happens if we can’t communicate at all, or barely?

In addition to language, there also comes the question of culture. Each culture has their own approach to mental health, with some adopting strictly conservative stances on the subject and others embracing the topic with open arms. Regardless, the culture a child is brought up will inevitably bleed through to the way that child is raised to think about mental health. For example, I was raised in rustic Soviet culture, which is one that allows for little in between extreme masculinity and extreme femininity. Neither leaves much breathing room to approach mental health. Overwhelming masculinity requires that men are, well, overwhelmingly masculine! Consequently, they are often forced to present themselves as tough, hardened people who do not cry or express negative emotions (and if they do, they are perceived as weak). On the opposite end, the emphasis on femininity turns toxic as well. Women are pressured to be “girly” all the time, leading crying, venting, and expressing anger to be considered unladylike and unattractive. Suffocated between two extremes, I’ve found that both men and women are unable to achieve the median in which they can vent and have conversations regarding mental health without having their identity invalidated. Other cultures’ standards and societal pressures may vary from what I’ve described, but it is unquestionable that the culture of an immigrant’s home country will always spill over into how they handle their children’s mental health.

Relatedly, each culture also retains their own respectively values, and consequently something they hold more important than all else (oftentimes including mental health). Some societies, such as the East Asian nations of Japan, Korea, and China, place a jaw-dropping emphasis on education and monetary success. While the pursuit of success, honor, and intelligence is placed on the highest pedestal, stress or other mental health issues are brushed away to the side. Many immigrants come from nations with powerful taboos surrounding mental health, and thus can go a lifetime without uttering a word about it. Thus, perhaps it may not always be that parents do not want to talk about mental health or that they consider it an unworthy subject, but rather that they lack the materials, knowledge, and experience to handle it properly. 

Although I can never be sure, I believe that these factors are the ones contributing to the epidemic of mental health issues I see amongst my first-generation friends today. What I do know, however, is that we need to work collectively to educate the people around us, including—and especially—those that come from an older generation. Hopefully, through our collective efforts, we can join to create a more tolerant and open environment for the children of the future.

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