Reflections from our February Community of Practice session 🤓

At Shapes and Sounds we acknowledge the key role which up-to-date scientific evidence plays in the delivery of evidence-based mental health care. As such, we bring to practitioners Community of Practice (formerly Connect and Grow) - a professional development program where we collaboratively reflect and discuss the practical relevance of recent literature surrounding the mental health of Asian populations within Australia. 

What did we discuss in our session?

For our first session, we discussed Maheen & King's (2023) article titled: Employment-related mental health outcomes among Australian migrants: A 19-year longitudinal study. This article explored the impacts of (un)employment on different racial, ethnic and migrant groups in Australia, and highlighted the ways employment status may interact with one's country of origin and gender to influence mental health outcomes. 

A key finding from their article was that the combined effects of being unemployed, and being a male migrant from an Asian country, resulted in lower mental health scores compared to Australian-born, employed men. 

The article also highlighted four key contributors to this discrepancy in mental health scores amongst migrants and Australian-born workers. Namely, these included: 

• Gender norms of men being the breadwinner of the family 
• Racism within the hiring process 
• Loss of social connections - since for many immigrants, their workplace may be their dominant social circle 
• Limited access to mental health services - potentially due to limited mental health literacy, stigma, cost of care etc. 

Key discussion themes 

When reflecting upon the study's themes and findings, practitioners reflected upon their own understandings and experiences of how Asian cultural values may influence the meaning of employment. Key themes included:

• The idea whereby academics are generally more strongly prioritised than employment for Asian tertiary students, and that holding a job that is 'unworthy' (e.g., irrelevant to one's future career prospects) may be seen as a less valuable use of their time, compared to if they focused purely on studies, but had no source of income. 
  • One practitioner mentioned that this echoes a distinction within Japanese vocabulary, where there are seperate terms for one's part time job, "バイト" (i.e., a job that may be invaluable and purely for financial purposes), and one's actual job, "仕事" (i.e., their 'real' careers).
• These reflections suggest that the meaning and value of one's work may be an important point of consideration for Asian community members when seeking employment, especially for those seeking tertiary education. In turn, this may impact financial stability and subsequent mental health. Practitioners should consider how these unique cultural values, in addition to systemic employment barriers (e.g., racism in the hiring process) uniquely contribute to (un)employment and impact clients of migrant Asian backgrounds.
• When considering why unemployment disproportionately impacts the mental health of Asian migrant men, practitioners reflected upon how these employment stressors may vary depending on the client's migrant cohort (i.e., 1st vs 2nd generation), their family's country of residence, and the responsibilities they hold for their families. Specifically, practitioners reflected upon the unique stressors which may be present in the need to send money back home to families in their country of origin, versus the stressors in caring for non-English speaking family members who have also migrated to Australia. In turn, these also highlight the importance of collectivism within Asian communities. In addition to gender and societal norms, it is thus perhaps important to also acknowledge how these interdependent construals may uniquely contribute to employment-related stressors in Asian clients. 

Practitioner reflections and implications for practice 

• Practitioners emphasised the importance of reflexivity. Specifically, practitioners noted the importance of reflecting upon one's own perceptions of the value of work and views towards unemployment, and how these may subsequently influence the therapeutic relationship. Understanding personal unconscious biases is key to providing care that is responsive to both the clients individual and cultural needs.
• Practitioners also mentioned a general lack in encountering unemployment concerns from Asian clients. This again highlights cost of services as a key barrier to mental health support - as those who are facing unemployment oftentimes have limited resources for therapy. This highlights a critical gap in service provision, and the importance for clinicians to remain cognisant of how systemic barriers disproportionately impact individuals most in need of mental health support.
• Finally, practitioners reflected upon how Asian clients expressed a tendency to seek employment support from local online community pages (e.g., cultural Facebook groups), with many of these being interest-based pages rather specifically for employment. This suggests that Asian migrant men may benefit more from support which helps them nurture exisiting or familiar community networks, rather than seeking explicit support from external resources. 

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Shapes and Sounds is home to the largest Community of Practice for Asian mental health professionals in Australia and we meet quarterly to discuss papers as summarised above. You can learn more about our Community of Practice here.

Alternatively, if you're interested in connecting with Shapes and Sounds through our cultural-competency trainings, you can learn more about our trainings here.