Mental Health Matters: Discovering Support for Mental Health and Asian American Youth

 Amy Choi, Emily Chong, Helena Jiang

(Editor's note:  Amy Choi, Emily Chong, and Helena Jiang are high school students from the Class of 2025 at the Canyon Crest Academy. They are working on a project titled "Mental Health Awareness for Asian American Youth," sponsored by ACA's mental health initiative. This is a memo the team wrote after attending the July API Coalition meeting.​ ) 

   On the first of July, a meeting was hosted by the San Diego API Coalition with a special presentation by the County of San Diego’s Health and Human Services Agency, specifically the Behavioral Health Services branch. Two groups involved with the 2024 API Project for Community Advancement attended, in hopes of learning about and fostering connections with mental health support organizations in San Diego. ​

    The 2024 API Project for Community Advancement is an opportunity for local San Diego high schoolers looking to improve their community. Our project, the Mental Health Support Initiative, aims to do just that, but how exactly? We plan to have our Asian American audiences, ranging from middle schoolers all the way to parents to understand the importance of mental health. With our use of pamphlets, where we have researched thoroughly and combined together for the community, as well as our future planned workshop, with the means to bring in mental health professionals, our goal is to spread the word. In doing so, we want the stigmas surrounding mental health to diminish as well as showcase all of the different resources there are for people struggling with mental stability. In order to further our research and meet with other like minded peers, we attended this July meeting, where we were able to meet many executives of the Behavioral Health Services branch. 

The meeting took place at County of San Diego Southeastern Live Well Center. It started with many introductions, and we met many Asian American led organizations. For example, a Filipino couple gave thanks for the grant they had received to start their own organization for the Filipino community in San Diego. We also learned about the various Asian American centered events happening across San Diego, such as film festivals with AAPI directed film screenings. It was very empowering to learn about how strong and lively our community was in San Diego, and how people were aiming to make a difference here.

    Next, the County of San Diego’s Behavioral Health Services (BHS) branch gave a presentation on the mental wellness programs they had hosted or supported in the past few years. One event that really stuck out to us was the naloxone information and distribution stands during the year. Naloxone is a medication designed to reverse drug overdoses, so it is especially crucial to know the basics of how it works and how to administer it during crises. We were extremely appreciative of the effort to raise awareness surrounding this important treatment. 

    BHS also introduced many mental health resources within the county of San Diego that we had no idea existed, such as the San Diego Access & Crisis Line (ACL) and the Mobile Crisis Response Teams (MCRT). Armed with this new knowledge, we hope to further investigate all the mental health programs San Diego County has to offer and compile them into a handy resource for our community.

    Before the meeting officially ended, we had the chance to network and connect with people who are making similar efforts to support mental health, especially during adolescence. We were also able to speak to the executives of BHS one-to-one, which allowed us to glean more insight into their mission and future projects to further assist those struggling with mental health in San Diego. 

Networking after the presentation; speaking with executives of BHS. (Photo provided by Jian Wu)

Attending this event allowed us to glimpse the effort and time the Asian American organizations of San Diego put into making our community a better place. The presentation by BHS shared information on resources anyone can reach out to and how removal of social stigmas built around seeking help is being done. “This meeting truly opened my eyes to the magnitude of work being done in my county to support mental health and the Asian American population,” said Amy Choi, a member of one of the attending groups. “I’m so grateful to have been able to attend and I can’t wait to share this knowledge with my community.” 
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The people we have met and the opportunities that have come with this meeting was unlike anything we could have imagined, and we thank ACA for this chance to join in on making San Diego County a better place.

One of the attending groups with the executives of BHS. (Photo provided by Jian Wu)