By: Kelly Ng

Amidst gigs drying up and persistent lockdowns, art and media practitioners across the world have found themselves in a tough spot due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While we are not out of the woods yet, some have recognized the larger psychological pandemic that this age of anxiety and the ongoing recession can fuel.
The Asian Mental Health Collective hears from actors An Phan (based in Los Angeles, USA) and Chase Tang (based in Ontario, Canada) on their thoughts about mental health.

An Phan

Vietnamese-American actress, An, was born and raised in Arkansas by parents who immigrated during the time of the Vietnam War. She moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting, and has since written, produced and starred in various films.

How have been spending your time amidst lockdown and quarantine restrictions?

This happened to be the year when I decided to take up a healthcare license – as you imagine, most actors don’t just do one thing, we often try to do something extra or more stable, while pursuing passion projects on the side. So I have just started helping hospice nurses care for senior residents when the pandemic struck.

When I got this job, I wanted to do just the bare minimum, like very “light work,” but this pandemic has really changed my life. All of a sudden, I would be exposed to what happens when workers don’t come into work. I started pulling hours from 9pm to 9am. I saw a ton of residents, I’d lost count, who were declining but couldn’t see their families because we wouldn’t allow their families to come and visit them. And I watched someone die in front of me. It was devastating. It was like watching a family member, someone you had taken care of for quite a long time, pass away.

How has the pandemic affected your acting friends and colleagues, broadly speaking

Many of my friends are not getting any jobs because the show business is closed. Many of them are bartenders and waitresses, but they aren’t getting any jobs on that front, too. Some have had to move back to their hometowns and home countries, and they have been crying to me, “I don’t know what happened. I planned everything out and now I’m locked in.” Compared to them, I’m definitely not even in a position to grumble right now.

And you find yourself serving as a listening ear to your friends during this time? How do you be a source of support for them?

There are about four or five of them who call me each week to talk about their situations. One, for example, has an 88-year-old elderly dad, so my friend feels like she can’t work for fear of bringing back something to her father.

I try to listen and speak to them with a lot of empathy and understanding. I think society tends to teach us to be self-dependent, with mindsets like “I have to figure things out.” But in my professions of acting and healthcare, I learn a lot of empathy, which is also very important in life. I learn not to come from a place of judgement. For example, if somebody has cancer, you never want to say things like, “Your cancer is not as bad as his or her cancer.”

Both my parents arrived in the US during the Vietnam War and I have watched my father suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. We lived in very humble conditions but as with many Asian families, mental health was never taken as seriously as it should be.

But that’s also why now, and all the more in crises like these, I see opportunities for us to come together and support one another. I think the pandemic definitely still shows that the minority communities are very strong and we are rising together.

Chase Tang

Born in Taipei, Chase’s family migrated to Canada when he was a child. Chase left a successful corporate job to follow his passion for the movie industry. He landed his first major role as the villain Baryon in Netflix superhero series Jupiter’s Legacy, set to air sometime in 2020.

Tell us more about your journey with mental health. What made you such an advocate? Were their personal stories that motivated you to it?

I had myself experienced depression twice in my life. The first time was when I was about 13 or 14, I used to be a high-level hockey player and all my life, my whole dream was to play in the NHL. But it didn’t work out. When my hockey career didn’t go well, I started experiencing all these emotions, it’s like you don’t know who you are anymore.

The second time was in 2015, when I was working in the corporate world. It must have been the worst time in my life, the hardest four or five months. I was under tremendous stress and had suicidal feelings and thoughts.

Fortunately I was able to develop methods to carry myself out of these pits. I had to reverse engineer my whole life, and this step-by-step approach is something I am passionate about and want to share with others.

Do you think it’s still a taboo in Asian cultures to seek help for mental health?

Yeah, psychological help and therapy has traditionally been more of a Western culture thing. Asians tend to hold on to these things – like if you are unhappy, stressed, just deal with it. I’ve heard my mom and my dad say that to us, “that’s life.”

My mom herself has been battling mental illness for the past eight years. She’s also divorced, and six months ago she converted to be a Buddhist monk. For me, she is a prime example of how mental health awareness/help is foreign to many in the Asian community. Their mindset is, this is my life and you cannot do anything about it.

Did you experience it personally when you sought psychological help?

Not really because the first time I experienced a massive anxiety/panic attack, at that time, it was my mom who suggested and she was open for me to go see a psychologist. But she is not open to do so herself. It’s been so many years since I’ve asked her to look at things differently, but she’s held on to this “I know what I’m doing” mentality.

Most recently she’s taken to Buddhism (and believing it) will be helpful for her.

How does being an actor also help you to be a voice for mental health awareness?

What are your ongoing and upcoming projects in the mental health realm?

I think being an actor and having a presence in Hollywood has given me a strong following. I have a certain star power to bring to the table. But the biggest thing is that I am a relatable person and not too distant (to my followers). I am working with the Mental Health Foundation at Nova Scotia, they’d like to use me as an ambassador and leverage on my fan base.

I also have a few speaking engagements lined up, I will be speaking primarily to Asian kids/children aged 10 to 15 locally in Toronto, via their schools and some acting studios. These talks will focus on not letting somebody else tell you who you are or what you should do, but I definitely want to touch on mental health as well.

About the Author

KELLY NG

Kelly is a multimedia journalist based in Singapore. She’s passionate about crushing myths around mental health through stories and words. For her most recent project, she spent two years in New York working on a documentary about an Asian American kids’ theatre club. You can find more of her stories and writings in her portfolio.

By providing platforms for people to talk, cry and listen to one another, Mustard Seed Generation wants to bring hope, healing, and reconciliation across the Korean American community. The organization started in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, where a Korean-American teen was identified as the perpetrator.
Then, MSG sought to bring healing to a community suffering from collective hurt and trauma. Today, it wants to normalize mental health conversations in this community which has traditionally shunned such topics. We speak with MSG’s chief executive officer Cathy Kang.

Tell us more about Mustard Seed Generation. What are you guys all about?

The image of a mustard seed often brings to mind something that is really small, but can make a big difference. Mustard Seed Generation, or MSG as we call it, is a non-profit organization started in 2007 by Professor Josephine Kim, a Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr Jo wanted to bring messages of healing to the Korean-American community after the high-profile Virginia Tech shooting incident.

MSG took a brief hiatus in 2014.

In 2017, I was then under the tutelage of Dr Jo at Harvard. My classmates and I joined her in organizing a conference on campus to raise awareness of mental health needs in the Asian American community. There, we saw how Korean parents, youths and community leaders actually wanted to learn and talk more about holistic well-being – which, up till then, was a very foreign idea, even for me. After the conference, some of us decided to partner Dr Jo in re-launching MSG.

I typically describe our mission with three “E”s. First, we want to educate parents and young Korean-Americans – to debunk certain myths, like how counselors and therapists are these people in white coats – to equip community and church leaders, and to empower Korean-American mental health practitioners. We want to make conversations around mental health normal in the community.

We have been trying to do that through annual conferences and workshops. Unfortunately, because of Covid-19, our conference this year can’t take place as planned. But we have a series of webinars lined up in May, which is also Mental Health Awareness Month.

But how did it all begin, back in 2007?

In 2007, the Virginia Tech shooting killed 33 people and it remains one of the deadliest shooting rampages in US history. But what stuck with Korean-Americans is the fact that the shooter was one of them – he’s Korean-American.

I remember feeling a lot of shame when I found out it had happened. And because Korean-Americans are part of such a collective society, it hits harder and impacts all of us.

Dr Jo was called on the campus then, and she found out that the shooter clearly had some mental health issues. But the local communities, churches, back then did not have the resources to support Korean-American immigrants.

Virginia Tech’s provost asked Dr Jo to help counsel Korean students on campus and in the surrounding community. In response, Dr Jo founded MSG.

Why is unique about mental health in the Korean-American community that we might not see in, say, a Chinese-American community?

I think the bridge between parents and children is the most important bridge we need to build, or mend. Dr Jo herself has spoken to several individuals following their suicidal attempts, and most were motivated to do that because of cultural conflicts at home.

This might be similar to other Asian cultures as well, but in the Korean-American community, we don’t really verbalize care, or say “I love you.” Instead, asking whether you have eaten, or if you need food, are the more common expressions of love. And there is a word in Korean we use to say “to endure something” – so that sort of mentality is very entrenched and you just have to keep going, keep moving forward.

And there also are the labels placed on the broader Asian community in general, like the model minority stereotype, or that Asians are good at math… I, for one, am not.

We don’t have much opportunity to work at these emotions that are bottled up inside us. We need to get them to start talking about these struggles.

How do you do that?

During our conferences over the last two years, we’ve had bilingual sessions so that parents who are not well-versed in English can also attend with their children. And we have seen talk and cry, express how they have been misunderstood. There was just never a space for them to talk about it.

But when other people start talking about their experiences, others will do it too. It can be very powerful, when you have someone else first opening up about it, and then it kind of gives you the permission to do so as well. We want them to know that “healing really starts with me.”

Since 2017, more than 1,500 parents and students have shared their stories with each other at our conferences and our workshops. Right now, our work is based mainly in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, but we are open to doing it in other places in the country. We already have workshops in Boston and several Californian cities.

And how do churches come in?

Another thing unique to the Korean-American community is that most (70 per cent: CHECK) Korean-American immigrants are affiliated to a church in some way, especially those in the older generation.

Faith is a huge thing in the community – there is a running joke that if you put a number of Korean-Americans together, they will set up a church. I grew up in a church, and a lot of my friends in school are also my friends in church.

A lot of Korean-Americans who are not particularly spiritual or religious are affiliated to a church too, especially if they are new immigrants seeking community. So there is a lot the churches can do as first-responders to help with mental health.

Any thoughts on mental health for Asian-Americans, especially in light of this Covid-19 pandemic?

A lot of us have friends and family who work in healthcare – somewhat befitting of the Asian stereotype, that Asian parents all want their children to be doctors. And there’s been a lot of anti-Asian sentiment amid the virus outbreak. There was a family, here in Texas, that had been attacked at knife-point.

We have to be proactive about checking in with one another at a time like that, dealing with general anxiety, fears, and grief surrounding the pandemic, and also the discrimination.

To support Korean-American families through Covid-19, MSG is rolling out a series of webinars in May, covering topics like how to regulate our emotions, how families can enhance communication during these days when they are spending so much time together at home, and conversations around anti-Asian sentiment.

To round up, can you share a bit about this image of a mustard seed? And also, what are your hopes for the organization, going forward?

Dr Jo came up with the name for the organization, and she was inspired by the parable of the mustard seed in Matthew 13 of the Bible – which talks about how even though it’s the smallest of seeds, it grows and becomes the largest of garden plants, and then a tree, so that birds can come and perch on its branches.

In some way, we hope MSG can be that too, that we can fill our own cups first and then pour them out to others. This is why we want to equip community leaders to serve their local communities. We hope to have opportunities to work with other marginalized groups as well, like the black community.