We Fear What We Don't Understand

A few weeks ago I went to a high school career fair for Asian American students. During one of my interactions I was explaining to a parent and child what social workers do and all the arenas that social workers are involved in. At the conclusion of this conversation the father says to me, "We have engineers in the world. Social workers are just a waste of resources." When I shared this story with people in my life who have a good grasp of what social work is, they all said, "How ignorant!"

Being ignorant isn't always a bad thing. It just means that there's more to learn and we don't know everything yet. I must say that there is a difference between ignorance by choice and simply being ignorant because of a lack of awareness.

Currently, I'm interning at a counseling program at an agency. Most of what I've gotten to do is marriage and family therapy. It's amazing to getting to learn more about human nature and in particular, the nature of intimate relationships. Amidst my experiences I asked someone close to me what they thought about counseling and therapy in general. This person responded by saying that counseling is good and all but it works for some people and not for others. In fact, this person didn't believe it would work for him. I found this person's response curious because the haunch that I had is that his perspective about counseling is very problem-based. Asking for help would be a sign of weakness and surely there are no problems big enough in this person's life that would warrant professional intervention at a mental health level.

I believe this sentiment to be true across many Asian American minds. Seeking help for mental health is definitely the opposite of "saving face".

Previously, a family friend was telling me about mental health concerns regarding her child. Her child was seeking counseling and had been seeing a therapist for several years. This family friend denied observing improvements in her child and couldn't wrap her head around why it was beneficial for her child to see a therapist. She talked to her child everyday and her child poured out her problems to her. In this experience she felt very strongly about her ability to counsel her child rather than a professional. In fact, she felt more qualified than the professional to provide counseling to her child.

Initially I responded very professionally, as an advcoate of counseling. I said that the difference between a counselor and a family member is that with a counselor, he or she can be objective. Her child has no obligation to please the counselor or do or say things that she thinks the counselor wants to hear. Additionally, she doesn't have to consider that what she says will significantly worry the counselor (excluding harm to self or others of course). A parent has a certain responsibility for the child and a level of worry that comes with that role. A child is aware of this position and I would dare to say that certain things are omitted from any unofficial counseling that is done in a parent-child relationship. Generally, there are things that children don't tell their parents and even less information is divulged if it's known the parent will worry excessively or suffocatingly try to solve the child's issues.

After sharing my little blurb I could see in this family friend's face that she was not buying a word I said. So I stepped back and thought about what was going on in this interaction. It wasn't so much that she didn't believe in therapy but the thing she seemed to be stuck on was the stigma associated with counseling. She could obviously see that the help she was offering her child wasn't working and her child was continually going back to wanting counseling. Something about counseling was holding her back from accepting her child's wishes. When I came to that epiphany, I asked the friend if she felt like counseling is for people who are crazy. On that note something connecting for her. In a roundabout way she affirmed my inquiry.

I proceeded in another direction. When we're physically unwell, we go to the doctor for a remedy to help us function better. This practice is accepted. Your body is sick, you get help from a professional to assist you in getting better if what you're doing on your own isn't working. Likewise when your state of mind is unwell, we can also seek a remedy to help us function better. It sounds bad but when your mind is sick, you get help from a professional.

I believe that the stigma associated with mental health has historical roots and has many cultural underpinnings. Think about what society did with people who were "insane" in the past. We didn't understand mental illness so we locked people away. Given, many individuals who were institutionalized were pretty low functioning. It might be difficult to think about but depression is a mental illness. How many of us know someone who has exprienced depression? We've all seen the commercials right? Those commercials that talk about how depression affects everyone.

Think about it this way, mental health professionals are merely specialists that offer help when the mind is unwell. We go to cardiologists for heart problems, opthamologists for eye problems, so why not social workers or psychologists for mind problems?

A new thought that I'm learning about is the impact of culture on the diagnosis of mental illness. One of the concepts out there is that the U.S. is a mental illness imperialist. Western society is taking the western way of considering mental illness to countries where the perspective is different. This is an entirely different conversation for another time when I've gathered my thoughts about it.