Breaking Silences in the Model Minority: A national intervention to increase mental health awareness and decrease stigma in Asian immigrant families

Our project tackles the problem of mental health and suicide in Chinese immigrant families.

Although Asian American youth are often stereotyped as a uniformly well-educated and successful “model minority,” they are at high risk of depression and suicide. Parents often want to help, but face barriers including communication and language challenges, lack of awareness, and stigma of mental health issues and treatment.

Our team will develop and disseminate culturally tailored, evidence-informed, and scalable programs and tools focused on mental health awareness, stigma reduction, and help-seeking that decrease suicide risk and directly empower Asian immigrant families to live their healthiest lives.

Strategies at the individual level will focus on destigmatization and education. Strategies at the family level will focus on improving parenting skills and practices, including parent-child communication. Community-level strategies will focus on building national networks and resources, including a national provider directory, in partnership with school districts and community organizations throughout the country. While the primary focus of the 2 current project is Chinese immigrant families, we anticipate that the programs, tools, and models developed can be adapted for other Asian and minority communities.