Patrick Pham: On Asian Mental Health Stigma & Advocacy
We are aiming to share the voices and experiences from Asian mental health advocates! If you are interested in submitting your responses to these interview questions, please email us at contact@fauna-npo.org - we would love to hear from you!
Please introduce yourself and why mental health advocacy matters to you!
My name is Patrick Pham. I also go by Toto in my family and my Vietnamese name is Ninh. I go by He/Him/His and in Vietnamese I prefer to go by “Em” instead of “Anh” despite being male.
My identities include:
I am a first-generation, Vietnamese-American, from Washington State.
I am a cisgender, heterosexual man.
I identify with Southern Vietnamese heritage, and I come from a background of military men and victims of war.
I am a survivor (suicidal depression, S.A, and abuse)
What are your experiences with mental health, and why does mental health advocacy matter to you?
Mental health matters to me, because I wouldn’t wish anyone to go through the things I’ve been through as alone as I once was. I believe everyone deserves a chance and opportunity for boundless joy, for contentment, and for fulfillment in life that would support healthy mental health and overall well-being.
I advocate for mental health as it’s treated with such stigma, ignorance, and disregard that it often gets side-lined both in people’s personal lives and in the community. We spend so much time focused on work, finances, and “success” in the form of accolades and net-worth that mental health is treated as a secondary effect of success. I’ve been witness and victim to the degradation of mental health and its pervasive effect on the lives of people near them. Often, these are folks who were on the fast-track of success who had everything come crashing down all at once. I myself was one of those people. I didn’t have a support system, nor experience with depression, and I thought of myself as a burden. I thought even a moment of rest from the upward grind would mean even more struggle, more pain, and that I’d be in a worse place than now. That wasn’t the case. I learned to understand that struggling while still climbing would only leave me in shambles, that a balance of self-care would mean that I’d be in a better spot and greater heights than my original pace. I had to learn that success has to be measured with myself on the scale, not just my belongings and titles. It’s this understanding that made me want to foster healthy coping strategies, to help others develop genuine self-esteem, assure individuals about their futures and their ability to survive their ordeals. I want to be a person who can help people develop the foundations of emotional, mental, and physical well-being.
What has your personal experience been around mental health stigma and shame?
I’ve suffered greatly from suicidal depression. The ideations and self-harming mentality detracted from my life in such a significant and extended period of time that I lost friends, opportunities, and simply the will to help myself at one-point. It was also a time of deep-personal growth. The reasons I wanted to go into mental health were ever more important, especially considering that my family never became aware of what I was going through, nor that they wanted to. There was a fundamental feeling of shame stemming from my sense of helplessness, vulnerability, and knowledge that my family would not care in a helpful or meaningful manner. Walking into my first therapist appointment was simultaneously a scary moment of my life and a moment of utter relief when the first things asked were “How are you feeling?” and “What has been occupying you”. I’ve never been really asked that in any genuine capacity, not by family, nor often by friends. It was this moment that brought to light the false shame that stigma produces. That fear and anxiety were not substantiated. I wasn’t a burden, crazy, nor was I broken, but rather, I was someone struggling and without the insight to help myself. The person in front of me, my therapist, was someone who was there to help me help myself.
What has taking care of your own mental health looked like, and how has it evolved through your lifetime?
The biggest thing for taking care of my mental health has been both my day-to-day tasks and hobbies as well as my peers. Originally, my day-to-day was school, homework, chores, doing things to feel accomplished and thus “healthy”. I tried to perform well both in-person and when I was in a digital space like CS:GO or COD. It was the case until I realized that much of my grind was largely composed of external validation of success. To me success = good health, and that I had plenty of it. It wasn’t until much later that I was aware that empty success was not synonymous with being healthy. Taking care of myself evolved into more of an expedition to find purpose, growth, and long-term enjoyment of things. It turned to exploring my city, its people, and its food. It turned to playing video games for a good laugh and a smile rather than a rank or rating. I explore new things with the intent to fail and learn rather than succeed at all costs. To me taking care had gone from empty fulfillment to genuine growth and foundation building.
What do you think are some of the biggest barriers preventing Asian and BIPOC individuals from seeking mental health resources, and how can we work to address these barriers?
The biggest issues we have is access to culturally competent caretakers and establishing within Asian cultures the fundamental building blocks of mental health success. When I say building blocks, I mean the ability to communicate about mental health openly, casually, and with differing levels of communication. I also mean developing family and peer structures which support all levels of those communications. I think we need to bring more awareness to mental health among Asian and BIPOC communities as a fundamental need and as something that not only saves lives but helps people grow. Having more competent caretakers and therapists with communities which can provide their services at affordable rates would be ideal. I think deconstructing the stigma that interpersonal conversation about struggle and mental health has to be done in a grander scale which lets cultures let go of the shame. I think giving older generations a place to speak about poverty, war, depression, and things they’ve never had the chance to talk about would help foster spaces for the more inclined younger generations to build healthy communities with their family. I think fostering more casual talk about feelings and about emotions is another big thing. I felt that my family never talks about their feelings in a substantial or dedicated way, it's attached to a larger conversation or occurrence. I think introducing time within your close groups to truly let someone feel emotionally supported, to have the floor, to suspend everything else but themselves for a moment would really help many folks.
How can we, as individuals in the Asian community, support each other on a day-to-day basis?
Check in with your friends, your peers, your neighbors, and strangers. Simply asking how a person is doing and how their feeling is much more than you would think. Genuinely provide support for one-another both during times of stress and times of peace. Not all struggles are apparent in normal interactions. Talk about mental health freely and openly, curate a space/bubble where the stigma doesn’t exist, where the shame isn’t in control, and where matters aside from someone’s well-being can be saved for later.
What advice do you have for someone seeking mental health support? Any specific advice for those in marginalized communities?
Often, family and friends may not be the best system for support. I know it was the case for me at one-point. Reaching out to anonymous help or community support from strangers is better than not seeking support at all. More often than not, those folk who struggle with similar things to yourself become good friends and even greater than that, family. They’re not at all judgmental.
The stigma is not only your enemy but the enemy of anyone who struggles or has struggled with mental health. It’s something that feels impossible to face alone, but in reality, there are others facing it alongside you. Together we can overcome that stigma, and eventually, we can see the day that it no longer plagues those who come after us. That thought helped me let go of the fear I had.
About Patrick Pham
Patrick is a collaborator of FAUNA Mental Health Foundation and a volunteer.
