Mental Health and Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Youth

“No, where are you real­ly from?”

Peo­ple of Asian and Native Hawai­ian and Pacif­ic Islander (NHPI) descent are sub­ject­ed to this harm­ful and exclu­sion­ary ques­tion every day in our nation. Though it may seem insignif­i­cant, it advances the per­pet­u­al for­eign­er stereo­type, which oth­ers Asian Amer­i­can (AA) and NHPI populations.

Research has shown that this stereo­type is pre­dic­tive of psy­cho­log­i­cal inter­nal­iz­ing prob­lems among these youth, and stud­ies have con­firmed that reg­u­lar expe­ri­ences with racial dis­crim­i­na­tion are linked to men­tal health prob­lems for kids. Like the ​“mod­el minor­i­ty” label, the ​“per­pet­u­al for­eign­er” stereo­type can be par­tic­u­lar­ly dam­ag­ing to ado­les­cents and young adults, as they are still form­ing their iden­ti­ties and going through crit­i­cal devel­op­men­tal phases.

The Men­tal Health Cri­sis and Asian Amer­i­can Youth

It may not be sur­pris­ing, then, that numer­ous reports and stud­ies have doc­u­ment­ed a grow­ing men­tal health cri­sis among AA and NHPI youth. Among the findings:

• Sui­cides have risen dra­mat­i­cal­ly among AA youth over the past two decades, surg­ing by 140% between 1998 and 2018. This is the largest increase of all racial and eth­nic groups accord­ing to a 2022 arti­cle in the jour­nal Pol­i­cy Insights from the Behav­ioral and Brain Sci­ences.
• In 2019, sui­cide was the lead­ing cause of death nation­wide for both NHPI and AA young peo­ple ages 15–24 accord­ing to a 2022 report by the Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress.
• Approx­i­mate­ly 1 in 5 high school stu­dents who self-iden­ti­fied as Asian (18%) and NHPI (21%) seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered attempt­ing sui­cide in 2021 accord­ing to the CDC’s Youth Risk Behav­ior Sur­vey. This fig­ure increased from 17% in 2011 for NHPI stu­dents and remained fair­ly even for AA students.
• The same sur­vey found that the share of stu­dents who actu­al­ly made a plan to com­mit sui­cide also increased between 2011 and 2021, from 13% to 20% for NHPI youth and 14% to 17% for AA youth.
• Near­ly 2 in 5 AA and NHPI high school stu­dents feel per­sis­tent sad­ness or hope­less­ness. Over the decade of 2011 to 2021, the CDC sur­vey found that stu­dents expe­ri­enc­ing per­sis­tent feel­ings of sad­ness or hope­less­ness jumped from 31% to 39% for NHPI youth and 29% to 35% for AA& youth.

Dis­ag­gre­gat­ed data on men­tal health for spe­cif­ic AA and NHPI pop­u­la­tions is great­ly need­ed and would help in iden­ti­fy­ing and address­ing dif­fer­ent needs among groups. While these find­ings col­lapse pop­u­la­tions togeth­er and mask dif­fer­ences, they are still deeply con­cern­ing, espe­cial­ly giv­en that NHPI and AA pop­u­la­tions have the low­est rates of men­tal health ser­vice uti­liza­tion of all racial and eth­nic groups accord­ing to mul­ti­ple sources.

Advo­ca­cy is urgent­ly need­ed to pro­vide addi­tion­al men­tal health sup­port for AA and NHPI youth. Tar­get­ed out­reach may be nec­es­sary to help over­come bar­ri­ers to ser­vice uti­liza­tion. Pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor lead­ers can help strength­en school-based and fam­i­ly sup­port ser­vices as well as address anti-Asian hate crimes, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and bul­ly­ing. Pro­fes­sion­als who work with chil­dren and youth should receive train­ing on racial stereo­types and their impact on youth, trau­ma-informed prac­tices and how to detect men­tal health prob­lems and link youth to appro­pri­ate services.

Watch a Webi­nar on Com­mu­ni­cat­ing About Men­tal Health

A Note About Language

We use the term ​“Asian Amer­i­cans” in this post to refer to both Asian immi­grants and U.S. cit­i­zens of Asian descent, as the term reflects the vast major­i­ty of this pop­u­la­tion, espe­cial­ly among children.