May Newsletter: Some facts around Asian Mental Health

Hello!,

Last month, we recorded season 1 of the Asian Mental Health podcast and were joined by some incredible guests who shared their personal and professional stories around mental health in Asian communities.

Through our podcast discussions, we landed on some key statistics that we wanted to share with you here.

• With a population of 4.97 billion, Asian people make up 59.7% of the global population.
• According to Mental Health America, Asians are the least likely to engage in mental health services compared with all other racial groups in Western countries such as the US and Australia.
• Furthermore, amongst the university student cohort, it was found that only 6.9% of international students from Asia had accessed mental health services, as opposed to 45% of their local counterparts (Yoon and Jepsen, 2008).

In an overly-simplified nutshell, we're a huge population, yet so few of us access mental health supports.

At Shapes and Sounds, we hope that we can play just a small role in helping you to reach out to professional services, or even to your family, friends, colleagues, managers, by normalising mental health conversations in our community.

We can't wait to share our podcast with you (launches on June 4th!) but for now, please enjoy our May newsletter below.

 ❤️Asami

🌱Upcoming workshops:

For therapists: Develop your culturally-responsive practice at our next professional development session, Connect and Grow on May 9th at 7.00pm AEDT.

Learning theme: Addressing the key mental health needs of different Asian sub-communities.

For therapists: In-person workshop with Daniela Ho Tan: "East meets West: Integrating Culture in Clinical Practice for Asian Heritage Populations" on June 27th.

For parents: 8-week Circle of Security parenting group (online) with Kara Choi starting May 3rd

 🦉 Interesting things relating to mental health and Asian Australian identity:

📚 Academia: This journal article questions whether a key Eurocentric developmental psychology theory is applicable to Chinese populations - it's interesting to see how not all seminal theories are culturally responsive!

🤳🏻 Events: The Buddha's Day festival is occurring on May 3, 4, 5th in Fed Square, VIC, where you'll find multicultural performances and art installations. For those interested in music, check out: The Boite: A Matsudo Week Concert, Rainbow Chan, and South by South East Asia, which will feature our very own technical producer Yeo!

📚 Books: The Antiracism Kit by Jinyoung Kim and Sabina Patawaran is a great practical guide to challenging racist structures, especially in school settings. Make sure to check out this important piece of work! 

🔎 Searching for a therapist?

Connect with our new practitioners below, or share this page with someone who may need this!

🎤 Therapist spotlight.

Get to know psychotherapist, Florence Thum, via our interview:

"Be bold and step into the unknown. Know that within you lay incredible resources and strengths."

 

Get to know clinical psychologist, Jeretine Tan, via our interview:

"Remain curious and connected to the present moment, and stay compassionate towards yourself and others."

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✨Thank you for reading up to this point!

We rely heavily on your generous support to provide ongoing and free mental health resources to Asian communities in Australia.

Support Shapes and Sounds HERE.

🐌 And last but not least:

Recently in social media land,

We discussed the diversity in mental health needs across Asian communities and disapora.📱Click to connect back in with our Instagram!