By Jean L. Neely, a Korean American writer and educator.
The world is really going through it right now! With economic instability, multiple wars, climate crisis—we’re all dealing with so much, on top of all the usual stress. The state of the world is taking a toll on us, and it’s tragic that Asian Americans still tend to be the least likely among ethnic or racial groups to seek assistance for mental health.
Years ago, I attended a seminar on mental health for Asian Americans, and one of the attendees shared that their sister had been struggling with depression, to the point of feeling suicidal. And yet, the parents refused to seek any outside help for the young teen. They wanted to keep everything quiet and within the family.
Hearing that story gutted me. Silence and secrecy are not the way to deal with these kinds of challenges. Collective silence magnifies feelings of personal shame and cuts us off from the kind of communal care that can heal the soul.
A profoundly troubling statistic has shown that while suicide rates have declined among some demographic groups over the past couple of decades, they have dramatically increased among Asian American youth. Currently, suicide happens to be the leading cause of death among young Asian Americans. These alarming statistics show just how important it is for us to break the stigmas and silence around mental health issues.
Sadly, when it comes to mental challenges, having Christian faith in the picture doesn’t necessarily help things. Sometimes it complicates matters. In Asian American Christian circles, it can sometimes feel like the life of faith is supposed to be an endless striving, striving to always do more and be better, not just for ourselves and our families, but for God.
I grew up in the Korean American church, and if you know anything about Korean Christians, you know how gung ho we can be about faith and doing church! (Plus, my dad was a pastor, which meant we lived church life on steroids!) In a lot of ways, my parents were like many other Korean immigrant parents. They worked hard and exemplified service to the church and the community. They sent me and my sister to Korean school, expected us to speak Korean with our elders, had us take piano lessons, and were on the overprotective side.
In Asian American Christian circles, it can sometimes feel like the life of faith is supposed to be an endless striving, striving to always do more and be better, not just for ourselves and our families, but for God.
But there were some ways in which my parents were distinctly unlike other Korean or Asian American parents we knew. They didn’t abide by many of the typical Asian American cultural norms. For one thing, they never pressured us to do well in school. They never pushed us to study harder or go to a prestigious university, or pursue specific careers. We were never subjected to the “doctor, lawyer, engineer” expectations, which many friends of mine had to deal with. And perhaps most importantly, they did not impose any silence or shame when it came to my mental health challenges. For this I am profoundly grateful.
I began to experience severe manic and depressive episodes when I was fifteen, during my sophomore year of high school. When my episodes began, none of us in my family understood what was going on. I thought I was just fine, if a little “hyper” at times. I was behaving so bizarrely that, at first, my parents worried I was on drugs or something, but when my odd behavior persisted—things like intense irritability, hyperactivity, random obsessions, and loss of appetite—my parents took me to see a psychologist they knew and then to the psychiatrist he recommended. I did not respond very well to the medication the doctor prescribed, and a particularly intense episode landed me in a teen psych ward. I was hospitalized for six weeks and missed about two months of school.
[My parents] didn’t abide by many of the typical Asian American cultural norms… they never pressured us to do well in school. They never pushed us to study harder or go to a prestigious university… We were never subjected to the “doctor, lawyer, engineer” expectations, which many friends of mine had to deal with. And perhaps most importantly, they did not impose any silence or shame when it came to my mental health challenges.
There were any number of ways my parents could’ve responded to my eccentric behavior. They could have told me to “get over it” or lectured me on how important it was to stay focused and do well in school. They could’ve freaked out about my GPA and college applications being right around the corner. They could have obsessed over “saving face” and insisted that we keep everything I was going through a secret.
They didn’t do any of those things.
They were sensible and compassionate in their response. Through it all, they never blamed me for what I was going through. They didn’t panic about how I’d catch up in school. They didn’t pressure me to keep my situation private. During my hospital stay, I didn’t just disappear mysteriously into the shadows. Everyone knew where I was, and I knew that a bunch of my aunts and uncles and cousins were praying for me. Friends from church and school sent cards and gifts, and a few visited me in the hospital.
Our generation is more open about these things, but my parents’ response was pretty remarkable in the context of 1990s Christian culture, and especially Asian American Christian culture. Back then I didn’t know of any churches that talked openly about mental health. It was a time when so many Christians still associated things like depression and anxiety with moral failure or lack of faith.
I was no exception. When I first received my bipolar diagnosis, I thought that my life was over. After I came home from the hospital, I was still reeling from the stigma of having a “mental illness,” and I crawled through the days feeling like a horrible Christian and a defective human being.
I personally think it was lifesaving that my parents responded in the caring ways they did. For several years, the bouts of depression were especially severe, and I think they would have been unbearably crushing if my family hadn’t been as supportive as they were.
I realize psychiatry is a murky and evolving science. A lot of people are misdiagnosed or ill-served by their diagnoses, but sometimes a diagnosis can be helpful information. My relatively early diagnosis and my parents’ support gave me access to good therapy and mood stabilizing medication. I doubt I could have gotten through college or grad school without all the resources I had to help me understand and cope with my moods.
As I reflected on writing this piece, I asked my mom what it was like for them when my episodes started and how she and my dad felt about it all. She mentioned how awful they felt for me. “We were so sad that you had to go through all that.” I pointed out that it seemed unusual for Korean immigrants of their generation to respond in such open-minded ways to a mental health crisis, and my mom agreed. She said it was a bit different now, but Koreans of her generation tended to look down on people with mental illness and dismiss them as “crazy.” She told me they had friends who responded really differently to their children’s emotional struggles. Apparently, among Koreans it wasn’t uncommon to send depressed or otherwise troubled family members off to a 기도원 (a Christian retreat center) to pray and recover—I guess in hopes of their getting “right with God”?
When I asked her what contributed to how atypical she and my dad were in their response, my mom said it probably helped that they were educated and not unfamiliar with medical matters. My mom was a registered nurse, and my dad had taken classes in psychology and was certified as a pastoral counselor. They both realized that some sort of health issue might be involved.
“But,” I asked, “didn’t you worry about what other people would think? Like what people at church might say?”
She answered, “No, not really. We didn’t care about that. We just felt so bad for you.”
Wow. My parents weren’t perfect, but they did a lot of things right.
I think the fact that they were well connected in the community was helpful. The psychologist they first took me to see was a Korean friend of theirs. And the psychiatrist he referred us to was also Korean. Even though my parents spoke English fluently, I’m sure there was a deeper sense of comfort and trust in being able to consult people within the Korean community about these issues.
From what I can tell about Asian Americans of my generation, we tend to be more holistic in our parenting and more open-minded about seeking help for mental health needs. But we can sometimes still get caught up in appearances and performance, or our own anxiety over our kids’ futures.
The latest numbers on suicide among our youth means that despite the fact that our generation might be more informed about mental health, young Asian Americans are still drowning at alarming rates. I’m sure that a host of systemic and other complex factors are contributing to these statistics, including widespread anti-Asian racism, highly pressured academic contexts, and harsh economic conditions. But I also still meet students who share that their Asian immigrant parents put a lot of pressure on them to succeed—academically, professionally, and otherwise.
We’re going to have to be even more proactive in trying to change the culture and hold space for young people to be able to breathe and thrive. I think my parents’ example offers some helpful lessons.
Instead of conforming to old cultural patterns, perhaps we could approach mental health holistically rather than over-spiritualizing complex conditions, turn to community for moral support and shared resources, and embrace vulnerability rather than hiding in our own little caves. I’ve seen over the years that vulnerability can help knit us together in deeper community and significantly assuage feelings of despair that can feel lethal on one’s own.
That’s partly why I wrote my book, Christ in the Abyss. As scary as it is to share about some of my worst-feeling moments, I wanted to write the kind of book that might have helped my younger self feel less alone while sunk in the abyss. I used to think I was the only Christian suffering in that way—because no one else I knew was talking openly about depression or despair at such extremes.
I think we need to be more honest about our pain and have more conversations about how tough life is, so that people don’t feel the need to hide their heaviest burdens. We can’t keep letting so many drown. We need to help each other breathe underwater. My hope is that we’ll grow into communities known for compassion, where everyone can feel welcome to show up just as they are, trusting they’ll be accepted and loved, no matter what.
Jean L. Neely is a Korean American writer and educator. She has degrees in comparative literature from the University of California, Irvine and Sorbonne University in Paris, and a PhD in English literature from the University of Southern California. Jean writes regularly on issues of mental health and faith for Faith and Leadership, a resource from the Duke Divinity School for Christian leaders. She has also written for Sojourners, Inheritance, the Asian American Christian Collaborative (AACC), and Christians for Social Action. Jean has taught seminars on navigating the intersections of faith, spiritual formation, and mental health for college students and Christian faculty. She is the author of the forthcoming Christ in the Abyss: Cultivating Deep Faith Amid Depression and Despair (NavPress, June 2026) and writes on the intersections of faith, mental health, and life in the depths at mercyinthedeep.substack.com.