@chibam i do see where you're coming from, but ultimately i think it misses the point of this thread (which is about sharing advice/stories/what helped people overcome cultural stigmas or feel more seen).
what you mentioned, it can be both a cultural rift as well as an individual one - depends on the person and circumstance. think of it this way - you're at the start line of race, there's some who have absolutely no family/financial support who just moved here, some who may have lived in third world countries, may have different religions, may have been forced out of their homes, may have experienced war, etc. for each of these things, imagine there's extra hurdles added between them and the finish line... the cultural side of things are a couple of those hurdles that sometimes don't get talked about, especially not in a recovery-focused way, which is what this space is for. there's definitely many other areas other than culture too that act as hurdles (and you or anyone else is welcome to start their own thread for that too).
@chibam wrote:
Say the hispanic patient I mention before belonged to the only hispanic family in a mostly-white town. How are they meant to discern what parts of their upbringing and personality are rooted in traditional hispanic culture, and which parts stem from the eccentricities of their own family group?
I get the impression that a lot of people searching for their true home cling to the idea that it will be as simple as just surrounding themselves with the culture they were born from - only to discover when they do so they they can no better relate to the culture of their heritage then they can to the white Australian culture they've grown up in.
I went to school with a couple of asians adopted into white families, who never really connected with said families. Nor did they seem to connect well with the student body or teachers, although the school had plenty of other asians who had plenty of white friends, and were well-liked by the teachers. They seemed to cling to the hope that the connection they yearned for would be found with their ethnic communities. But my understanding is when they tried to venture in to these communities, they found them even less relatable then they found their mostly-white Australian community.
i guess you've pretty much touched on exactly why discussing that rift is important! it's that pull between the roots/traditions/ethnic background and then the western world/views, and modern world and the diverse network of people we're surrounded by now. how did everyone cope? were there ways that made this easier when it came to reaching out for mental health support? etc. everyone's different depending on their experience - and talking about it, sharing what's worked for different people, is a way of helping each other. there's often no clear answer which makes it isolating. personally i used to struggle with not feeling 'indian' enough around my family, but then not 'Australian' enough around my classmates/society. but in recent years i've started to find my balance, and a big part of that was thanks to tv shows and movie representations. being able to see brown women on Hollywood screens being portrayed as lead characters and discussing mental health meant a lot to me and my brown friends too.
@chibam wrote:
So, maybe I'm unfairly projecting here, but my situation just gets me wondering: how many of these supposed cultural rifts between "mentally ill" non-white Australians and the dominant white culture aren't really cultural rifts between the two cultures at all? How many of these situations are less a case of the person being incompatable with white Australian culture, and more a case of being incompatable with the world as a whole, including the culture of their heritage?
Do we overemphasize the wisdom of looking for answers in a person's heritage? Should we be making more of an effort to percieve people as self-formed individuals, rather then products that have been defined by whatever culture they've been biologically born from?
I can't speak for others, but my own experiance has lead me to believe that one should not be too quick to believe that there is a connection between a person and whatever culture they've been born from. Especially when we're talking about individuals who are dubbed "mentally ill". They may well be just as abnormal to the people of their own heritage as they are to our western society.
I think these are some pretty interesting questions - and personally the way i view suicide/death is largely based on my religious beliefs (in my religion, ending one's life does not 'end' their problems as their soul will be reincarnated into a new body and they'll have to continue facing the same/harder problems until they learn their lesson/overcome the obstacle). But accepting my religious background and actually being willing to learn it was an obstacle on its own - christianity is the dominant belief in this country, and as a hindu who went to catholic schools - that was another lil hurdle that made things confusing but also made me more accepting of other people's views. the lesson that i've been learning is more that - it's not an 'us and them' but rather finding who you at the core. and following that - traditions can be important but also understanding the 'why' and not following it blindly was something that helped me find myself and feel less isolated.
okay i might have rambled off topic now - it's sort of hard not to when its such a HUGE conversation. but yeah feel free to share any words of empowerment/any representations you've seen that might be helpful for people struggling with their cultural identity and mental health!!
