Three years after AAJA started focusing on journalists’ mental wellness, new resources are available but structural change is scarce

By Jin Ding and Naomi Tacuyan Underwood

Three years ago, the Asian American Journalists Association launched a mental wellness program for members; this included a mini-grant fund to make professional therapy more accessible, as well as a regular facilitated listening series, The Space. The first “The Space” session, “Attack on AAPIs,” was tragically timely, occurring the evening after news broke of the March 16, 2021 shootings in Atlanta spas. 

The Atlanta shootings, where six of the eight people killed by a gunman were of Asian descent, brought a surge of interest in AAJA’s guidance on how to cover the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. Unfortunately, as we took stock last year, we found very little has changed in the way news organizations cover communities of color. In fact, recent rounds of layoffs have disproportionately affected journalists of color, raising concerns about community representation during a presidential election rematch. 

Meanwhile, the relationship between the U.S. and China has shifted from competition to outright rivalry, raising fears that Asians could be scapegoated again, as during the pandemic – and at various other junctures in American history.

If there has been a silver lining to emerge, it’s that researchers have gone deeper than ever before in analyzing the mental health needs of AAPIs, and have created valuable resources for journalists for covering AAPI communities.

The newest of these comes from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and AAPI Data, and focuses on the question of why AAPIs report a need for mental health services at a lower rate than the general population, even though they are exposed to stressors, such as discrimination, at a higher rate. 

Entitled “Piecing the Puzzle of AANHPI Mental Health,” the report posits that while community resilience and perseverance in the face of adversity have helped members of AAPI communities survive oppression and trauma, the same characteristics make it difficult to recognize concerns about mental health and accept support.

The report found that mental illness carries a stigma that deters many AAPIs from seeking help, while those who do often encounter linguistic and cultural obstacles. It recommends using more culturally relevant outreach specified for nationalities and languages and developing a pipeline of culturally competent mental health professionals.

Conducted in California, home to the largest AAPI population in the U.S., the research goes beyond U.S. borders to recognize the impact of American colonialism in the Pacific; the resettlement trauma of Southeast Asian Americans, and racist policies such as the Japanese American internment during World War II and the Chinese Exclusion Act. 

This historical trauma was exacerbated during the pandemic, which saw a rise in anti-Asian hate incidents. In fact, the research found that one in five AA adults have been the victim of a hate incident or crime. Within Asian subgroups, the share ranges from 16% (Filipino) to 38% (other Southeast Asian).

Other stressors highlighted by the research:

• Nearly half of NHPI and AA adults worry about gun violence. Within Asian subgroups the share of those who worry ranges from 30% (Japanese) to 52% (other Southeast Asian). The worries spike among young people: 62% of Japanese Americans aged 12-17 express worry about being shot with a firearm, followed by Filipinos at 38%.

• Everyday experiences with discrimination are common; close to half of AA and NHPI adults report being asked where they are from, assuming they are not from the U.S., and nearly a third report having received poorer service in restaurants or stores.

Both AA and NHPI adults report experiencing these stressors at a higher rate than the general population of California, yet Asian Americans report the need for mental health services at a much lower rate than their fellow Californians – 16% compared with 24%.

Why don’t more Asian Americans seek help? The report posits that cultural factors are at play. 

“People in many AA and NHPI communities have a strong focus on resilience and perseverance that has enabled them to survive oppression and trauma, yet it deters help-seeking behaviors,” the report says. “For example, the result of war-induced trauma and colonization in the Philippines insist that Filipino Americans be resilient. This manifests as ‘survivor mentality’ that conflicts with help-seeking behaviors.”

“In Japanese culture, references to shikata ga nai (meaning ‘it cannot be helped’) and gaman (meaning ‘to endure and persevere’) surface when discussing mental health. In the face of these notions, mental health problems often are perceived as something to simply accept, endure, and conceal. The societal pressures of the model minority stereotype only further exacerbate the inclination to simply accept and endure.” Similarly, the Filipino notion of “bahala na,” which roughly translates to leaving it to fate, perpetuates a feeling of passive acceptance and helplessness.

The stigmas against acknowledging mental illness vary from culture to culture, from seeing it as a sign of weakness to blaming demons, but they exist in most. The report’s recommendations:

The Atlanta shootings were not the beginning, or the end, of the trauma. On Jan. 21, 2023, a gunman killed 11 people at a dance studio in Monterey Park, Calif. In this case, the gunman, like the victims, were of Asian descent. Across the country, hate crimes and incidents targeting people of Asian descent surged during the pandemic, and continue to this day, after China was blamed for the outbreak of Covid-19. 

The American Psychiatric Association took notice, focused specifically on the role played by journalists, and in November 2023, published a Reporter Toolkit: Recommendations on Covering the AAPI Community. 

Designed to head off sensationalized or biased reporting, the toolkit helps journalists to think about the impact of their reporting, provide context, and address upstream factors involved in anti-AAPI hate, such as hate-inspiring rhetoric and media misrepresentations.

Some top takeaways of the APA toolkit:

The toolkit represents an acknowledgement that the way journalists cover traumatic incidents can affect the mental health of the communities covered. That underlines the importance of hiring culturally competent journalists, who know and represent the communities they cover. AAJA will release additional research this year on how AAPIs get their news and information and on the experiences of AAPI journalists who seek to deliver that news.

For a list of other organizations providing mental health resources to AAPI journalists and community members, visit the Mental Wellness Resources page on AAJA’s website. 

The AAJA Mental Health Fund provides direct micro-gifts to AAPI journalists who have indicated a need for professional therapy services. As of 2024, AAJA has provided funding to over 80 AAPI journalists from these grants. Donate to the fund here.