04/12/2024

Friends of Franz Podcast S3 E18: Cutting Up Fruits with Asian Mental Health Project and Anise Health

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, in 2021, 25% of Asian American adults with a mental illness reported receiving mental health services compared to 52% of White adults. Additionally, Asians were 2.25x more likely to report mental health treatment being ineffective. What is it about the Asian American community that their approachability to mental health and mental health care is lower than other demographics? Is it mistrust in the system? Is it disbelief in the concept of the services? Or can it be fear and shame to partake in these discussions and actually receive help? In this episode, we tackle the sensitive, often taboo, and stigmatized conversations that surround Asian communities and their mental well-being: the model minority myth, racism and microaggression, intergenerational trauma, guilt and shame within collectivist cultures, and the importance of culturally responsive mental health care.

Carrie Zhang is the founder and executive director of the Asian Mental Health Project (AMHP), a non-profit organization that provides educational resources and community care initiatives to help de-stigmatize mental health and make it more accessible for the Pan-Asian community through social media, multimedia content creation, and community events.

Alice Zhang, CEO and Nisha Desai, COO are the co-founders of Anise Health, an online holistic mental health service for the Asian community that incorporates cultural stressors into personalized treatments. Alice and Nisha were co-pupils at Harvard Business School for their MBA, where they saw and agreed on the importance of culturally-responsive providers and an integrated approach to executing data-driven treatment for Asian clients.