Join us for our next Mind Matters meeting!

We are excited to welcome Craig Bryan, PsyD, ABPP as our next Mind Matters speaker!

Dr. Bryan, renowned suicidologist and trauma psychologist, will challenge current wisdom on suicide prevention and propose alternative perspectives to guide suicide prevention efforts at our next Mind Matters meeting on September 25, 2024.

By the conclusion of the meeting, participants will understand the relationship between mental health conditions and suicide, the multiple pathways model of suicide, and be able to identify the five levels of the prevention through design model.

If you have a case you'd like to share for consultation and support at this or a future Mind Matters meeting, please email Anitha Iyer, PhD, Course Director.

Remember that you can view recordings and slides of previous meetings on our website. Past meetings have covered treating depression and anxiety in primary care, substance use, eating and feeding disorders, and more.

Most recently, Dr. Eyal Shemesh spoke about the challenges and limitations in routine depression screening.

The American Psychological Association (APA) provides an in-depth discussion of culturally competent care for AAPI patients. Some considerations for your day-to-day practice include:

Provider education on AAPI history, stereotypes, and internalized biases

Culturally competent care for any marginalized and/or minority group requires ongoing, honest reflection on our own internal and subconscious biases. Dismantling stereotypes and myths and understanding how those harm marginalized individuals is crucial to culturally competent care.

Awareness of diverse cultural beliefs and practices

Many Asian and Pacific Island cultures emphasize the relationship between physical and emotional health, value cognitive control over emotions, and look to indigenous healing practices. Stigma and shame surrounding mental health challenges may lead to more reports of somatic and physical manifestations of stress, anxiety, and depression.

The harm of the model minority myth

Views of Asian Americans as the “model minority” not only reinforce the same structures of oppression that criminalize and impoverish Black Americans, but also position Asian Americans as “too well off” to seek help and exempt from discrimination, while engendering feelings of self-doubt, inadequacy, and suicidality.

AAPI immigrants who live in poverty are invisible in this discourse, while income inequality among Asian Americans outpaces that of any other group.

Asian Americans are less likely to seek mental health services than white Americans, and are more likely to present with more severe symptoms when they do seek help.

Little research (0.17% of NIH-funded research from 1992-2018) exists on mental health in AAPI individuals, which not only leads to under- and misdiagnosis, but also raises concerns around psychopharmacologic treatment, its efficacy, and side effects in this population.

Ultimately, all treatment providers must understand culturally competent care is everyone’s responsibility if we are to provide the best possible care to our diverse patient population.

An intersectional approach to Asian American women's health

Coined by legal and civil rights scholar, Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, intersectionality examines how multiple social and political identities mediate and exacerbate discrimination, oppression, and empowerment. Despite its influence on the social sciences and humanities over the past 35 years, medicine and psychology have largely failed to consider the compounding effects of intersectional oppressions and how they manifest in both physical and mental health.

While substantial research has demonstrated the negative effects of both racism and sexism on mental and physical health, most research on discrimination among Asian American women looks only through the lens of racism, while research on sexism typically centers white women.

A 2023 scoping review published in Frontiers in Public Health identified only 23 studies, mostly qualitative, that discuss (implicitly or explicitly) intersectional discrimination of Asian American women and concomitant psychological wellbeing and coping. The review identifies a number of ways in which Asian American women experience both gendered and racialized discrimination and violence:

• Hypersexualization and fetishization
• Assumed to be passive, docile, and submissive
• White beauty ideals that can contribute to negative body image, eating disorders, and cosmetic surgery
• Lack of representation and misrepresentation in media
• Limited professional advancement: the glass ceiling and the “bamboo ceiling”

Consequently, Asian American women may be susceptible to depression, suicidality, anxiety, and disordered eating. Coping strategies include avoidance, assimilation and code switching, social support, empowerment, and activism.

The review identifies several major gaps in the literature, highlighting the lack of understanding and research in this area. In addition to few studies using an explicitly intersectional framework and a lack of quantitative studies that can identify population-level trends, the current research mostly focuses on interpersonal discrimination – ignoring structural, institutional, and internalized racism and sexism.

Additionally lacking are analyses of other social, economic, and political positionalities: how do classism, homophobia, colorism, and transphobia, for example, interact with racialized and gendered discrimination? Furthermore, the review did not find any qualifying studies that investigated discrimination of AAPI women in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite women reporting hate incidents 2.3 times as often as men between March 2020 and February 2021.



Read the review

Don't miss this recent Carr Talk on the new behavioral health center on Rivington Street on the Lower East Side.

Dr. Carr calls the center "one of the most revolutionary and game-changing behavioral health facilities in the nation." Providing comprehensive integrated care in one facility, providers holistically evaluate and treat patients' entire continuum of health care needs.

Ensure your patients are aware that their insurance provider must cover behavioral health benefits with no session caps. This quick guide explains how to find treatment and services and includes information about understanding insurance coverage and benefits.

Epic users can include this information as part of the After Visit Summary by using dot phrase .behavioralhealthresourceguide.

It's no secret that there is high stigma surrounding mental health which can be incredibly harmful to people living with mental health conditions and interfere with their treatment and recovery.

The CDC offers a variety of provider resources on mental health literacy, including a CME course from the University of Texas at Austin on stigma-free communication about mental health.

Spanish language resources from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

NIMH has patient-friendly information about a variety of mental health topics in Spanish. Share this information with Spanish-speaking patients to help them understand any relevant topics or diagnoses.

Information to share with your patients: eating disorders

Well-being and mental health resources for Mount Sinai Health System faculty, staff, students, trainees, and co-insured family members

MSHS offers a variety of support services to all faculty, staff, students, and trainees. To learn more, view this flyer.

This flowchart highlights available options for therapy and medication management.