what its like to be a child of immigrant reddit

Past Kenna Chick, 2017-2018 Collegiate Mental Health Innovation Quango Member, Georgetown University

July is Minority Mental Health Month, and there take been many articles published providing insight into the cultural complications of mental health for people of color.

I experience as if many mental health pieces in regards to youth of color tend to demonize parents as strict, stubborn, and unsympathetic towards mental health struggles. In the instance of Asian parents, fault is ascribed to the Model Minority Myth (which is strongly upheld in many Asian households through strict bookish and behavioral standards) and Asian stigma around mental disease. As a Chinese-American woman, I too have kept my mental health struggles under wraps for these reasons. However, being the girl of lower-center-class Chinese immigrants adds further complication in disclosing my mental health struggles. Of form, my experience does not embrace all Chinese or all immigrant lives; yet, I would like to share my story equally it pertains to my identity in gild to provide further insight on just how emotionally and practically complicated acknowledging mental health struggles and seeking handling can exist.

Why I Can't Tell My Parents Virtually My Mental Affliction:

1. Immigrant Guilt
   Regardless of their background, a great number of immigrants come to a different country to completely first anew. Many of them accept given up on their ain personal hopes and dreams of living the life that they have ever wanted. Instead, they residuum their purpose on providing the best they can for their children. They sacrifice their hopes and dreams so that anytime their children can have the opportunity to make their own hopes and dreams come truthful. Like myself, many children of immigrants grow up witting of the enormous sacrifices that their parents take made and spend the rest of their lives proving to their parents that the suffering was not in vain. For this reason, I exercise not feel comfortable informing my parents of my mental health struggles. How can I, when they have given upwardly everything for me to be happy?
2. Dependent Relationship Dynamic
   Through many conversations with my friends (of all different backgrounds), one thing has been made clear to me. It seems that in many families, the role of parent and child is defined. Parents give nascency to children and are largely responsible for caring for and providing for them. When it comes to immigrants, the relationship between parent and child is much more complicated. Considering I am built-in in the United states and more accustomed to the civilisation, linguistic communication, and societal structure of the Us, I often feel responsible for translating the culture to my parents. Even at a young age, many of my immigrant peers and I take had to learn to translate documents, bills, and even laws to my family unit. This created a shift in the parent-child relationship that forced us to have responsibility for our families before on and also exposes the states to family struggles that many other children were shielded from.

   As a disclaimer, I am non suggesting that immigrant parents are not good parents. I am only saying that existence immersed in a new culture is difficult to navigate, and immigrant children oft end up providing guidance in that sense.

However, fifty-fifty if I were able to move by these two concerns, there are 2 more practical barriers to bargain with.

Practical Barriers:

1. Affordability
   As with many lower-middle-class immigrant families, the fiddling coin that nosotros have is difficult-earned, and most goes into paying for food, shelter, and bones utilities. Therefore, every bit long as someone gives the advent of beingness functional in everyday life, their wellness struggles are not given additional thought. This is especially true for mental illness, an invisible struggle. Additionally, because my parents are resting their hopes and dreams of success on me, other resources they accept are often devoted to my time to come, such as paying my higher tuition. Finally, mental health treatment can be expensive, ranging from $100 to $300 per session. These costs add together up, making long-term mental health treatment difficult.
2. Language Barrier
   Even if I wanted to, I would not exist able to have a conversation almost mental wellness with my family. Mental illness itself is already hard to put into words. Describing mental illness in a linguistic communication that one is unfamiliar with – and where terms for mental health are then stigmatized that they are more so used equally casual insults than bodily medical terms – makes the conversation most incommunicable and largely unproductive.

To exist the kid of an immigrant means growing upward faster.

To be the child of an immigrant means taking responsibility for your family unit.

To be the child of an immigrant is to carry the hopes and dreams of your lineage.

The pressure that children of immigrants face is high, and the mental health support is low.

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Source: https://www.mhanational.org/blog/be-child-immigrant

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