Suicide and Asian American females.

This story made me think today about the oft-quoted statistic that the 2nd leading cause of death for young Asian American females is suicide.

Have I ever thought about it? Never seriously. Have I known Asian-American females who thought about it? Yes, but it was hard for me to judge how serious they were.

I don't quite buy the idea that the model minority myth and the pressure to succeed is driving Asian-American women to suicide. What's a little more plausible to me is that we have this pressure and others specific to our lives and if we are angry or frustrated or need support, we often lack the vocabulary and methods and venues to express rage, frustration, or vulnerability.

I do think that Asian females in America are often raised to have the temperament of a sweet-natured, relentlessly positive 50s housewife and are discouraged to voice dissatisfaction and the rage and hopelessness just builds. It's a situation that reminds me of Donald Draper's wife Betty on "Mad Men." She's a college-educated former model married to a successful man and everyone, including herself, can't figure out why her hands are going numb.

Well, it's obvious to the audience: she's deeply unhappy and the physical numbing aligns with her mental numbing. She's trapped in the role of the homemaker, a role she might've freely chosen, but only because it was the only viable role of success she can conceive for herself. She's smart, she's beautiful, and she spends her days in a dressing gown fantasizing about the door-to-door salesman. She had the opportunity to return to modeling and have a career, and Don declines the offer for her, and she demures and claims she hadn't wanted to go back to modeling after all.

Betty's psychiatrist gives her a dismissive diagnosis of being a typical unhappy housewife consumed with petty jealousies. I can imagine the same dismissive excuses ("She's busy with school!") being used to mask deeper depression among Asian-American young women.

Like Betty, I can see some Asian-American women feeling trapped in whatever role they've been encouraged to take up and unable to even articulate why they'd be unhappy with a situation they freely chose and that they receive tremendous positive feedback from their community for choosing.

Is this situation unique to Asians? No, that would be too generalizing. I think our culture has a high tendency toward this clusterfuck of wanting our women to be super femme-y and super high-achieving, but not super-bitchy, even when its necessary for our sanity.

Solutions? Rock 'n' roll. Really, I have no idea how I would've survived my teens without punk rock shows. I think that's why the young Asian woman in the Girls Rock! trailer gets me a little teary because I had the same terrible feelings about myself and found relief and community in music.

at 7/01/2008 04:05:00 PM

5 comments:

  1. Hi Stacy,

    You don't know me but I've been following your blog and on Twitter for a while now(reason: I grew up in Vallejo and it's nice to follow someone from the "local" area). Anyway, I felt that I had to add a little something to your post.

    I'm Filipino and have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder for the past 11 years. I am one of those Asian American females that has attempted suicide...multiple times in the past...mostly related to depressions that occur during my bipolar cycles. Mental illness is something that I find that the Asian American community still has problems dealing with. When I told my Mom about my diagnosis she did the "Uh huh. Okay." thing and has never talked about it since. When I was diagnosed I was 33 years old...I'm just shy of 44 now.

    When I go home to visit, no one (aside from my younger sister) asks how things are going, if I've had any problems, etc. It's like my illness doesn't even exist. However, when I go with my husband (German descent) to visit the in-laws, his family always asks how my mental health has been. Mental illness is still seen as taboo in our culture and we need to change that stigma.

    I hope that I do my part as a nurse educator by instilling a sense in my students that mental illness is like any other medical diagnosis. Granted, it's not specifically directed at Asian American students but if I can help break that stigma in even one of my few Asian American students (I live in a small city in New Mexico now) maybe one day the culture will come to see mental illness in a different light and begin to learn the signs for mental illness and the risk for suicide.

    Sorry for rambling.
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  2. Thank you so much for the comment, Beth! I didn't mean to leave out actual medical treatment as a solution to this issue. Operation Ivy can't solve every teenager's problems.

    Please continue your work. I agree that mental illness is rarely spoken about in our communities, and its that unfamiliarity that is stopping women from seeking help.
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  3. There is so much out there for teens and young women but what about older women? Am I a freak b/c I am so troubled and looking 40 in the eyeball? I think Asian-american women suffer from severe identity crises, horrible self esteem and in my case, an inability to fit in anywhere. I won't say more on the internet but i'm a complete basketcase and desperate to find people who are the same - everyone around me has friends/family and i just feel like a total freak.
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  4. Hey anonymous nearly-40-year-old Asian lady: don't hesitate to seek counseling! If you're in the Bay Area, I've heard that RAMS is a good resource for the Asian-American community.
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  5. Dear Stacy,

    You don't know me but my name is Stacey Jensen. I googled my name and your blog came up. Then I got a little freaked out.

    I'm an attorney. I was born in Richmond. I'm 1/4 japanese. weird.
    ReplyDelete

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