Anti-Asian Hate & Mental Health: Visibility, Empowerment, and Culture

Research has linked the recent rise in anti-Asian discrimination to increases in anxiety, depressive symptoms, sleep problems, and other physical health symptoms for Asian Americans. Additionally, a significant number of anti-Asian violent attacks have targeted Asian American elderly, impacting several generations within households and communities. Although anti-Asian hate is historical and not new, the recent increase triggers a rising awareness of everyday discrimination for many Asian Americans. Asian Americans are less likely to access behavioral health services than any other racial or ethnic group sometimes avoiding seeking help because of cultural stigma and often because culturally relevant services are not available.

This workshop will highlight professional culturally appropriate mental health care responses to the current crisis with the use of support groups (instead of one-on-one sessions), psychoeducational workshops, empowerment in the form of advocacy, cultural empowerment, and partnerships with Asian American community organizations. Behavioral health care providers and other professionals in support roles can be more effective by participating in and supporting political and community advocacy for Asian Americans.

What will you learn in this workshop?

• Mental health impacts of anti-Asian hate and xenophobia on Asian Americans in the U.S.
• Culturally appropriate practices that increase the likelihood of Asian American individuals’ participation in social support services and mental health services.
• Literacy and advocacy on Asian American community empowerment which supports community resiliency and empowerment on behavioral health in Asian American communities.

Who is this workshop for?

• Behavioral health care providers who work with Asian American communities.
• Members of Asian American community-based organizations.
• Support staff in public schools and higher education institutions who work with Asian American students.
• Asian American individuals and those who support them.

Download the workshop slides here.

Workshop Presenters

Kathleen Wong(Lau), PhD

(she/her)

California State East Bay

Kathleen Wong(Lau) is the University Diversity Officer at California State University East Bay, where she leads the Office of Diversity providing vision, strategic direction, and support for university-wide efforts to ensure a welcoming environment and systemic equity for members of campus and in its relationship with the surrounding communities. Prior to her current appointment she served in a similar role as Chief Diversity Officer at San Jose State University for six and a half years.

She served as the Executive Director of the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE) and as Director of the Southwest Center for Human Relations Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Prior to that she served as faculty at Western Michigan University and as a research associate in the national Multiversity Intergroup Dialogue Study at the University of Michigan. Her noteworthy accomplishments include co-founding the Journal of Commitment to Social Change on Race and Ethnicity (JCSCORE), and serving as a faculty associate and facilitator for Campus Women Lead, a transformative leadership initiative of AAC&U. As a graduate assistant she helped co-found the Asian Pacific American Studies Program at Arizona State University. She received her PhD in Communication Studies from the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication. She is a first-generation college student having worked in community-based organizations in San Francisco Chinatown and as a union butcher in Oakland, CA who entered higher education as an older returning student.

She is a bilingual second-generation Chinese American descending from working-class immigrants from Hong Kong who migrated to California in the 1950s under Asian Exclusion.