Today is World Mental Health Day and there is a conversation Indian American families need to have but too often avoid.
We have become exceptionally good at celebrating academic achievement, professional success and financial security. We know how to prepare our children for college, medical school, engineering programs and competitive careers. We are terrible at teaching them how to navigate the emotional realities of growing up in America and the importance of mental health.
Our children are expected to succeed, make us proud and demonstrate that our sacrifices were worthwhile. When they struggle, we often tell them to work harder, stop worrying, be grateful for what they have or simply move on. The message, whether we intend it or not, is familiar: grin and bear it.
It is a mantra many Indian parents have inherited, but it is one we need to reconsider. Resilience is valuable, but resilience without emotional support can become a demand for silence. And with silence we risk confusing a child’s ability to hide distress with the skills to manage it.
The challenge is particularly complicated in Indian American households where parents were born and raised in India while their children are growing up in the United States. Parents may understand the importance of education, discipline, family obligations and hard work. They may have navigated immigration, financial uncertainty and the demands of building a life in a new country. While the sacrifices are real, understanding the challenges of immigration is not the same as understanding the social environment in which their children are growing up.
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Many parents never walked the hallways of an American high school where students may encounter marijuana, vaping, alcohol, drugs, sexual pressures, bullying and the relentless scrutiny of social media. They have no clue how quickly a teenager’s social standing can change, how difficult it can be to resist peer pressure, or how much of a young person’s identity is shaped by the need to belong. Anyone that does not follow the expectations of “society” is considered a pariah. Nobody takes the moment to examine the cause for the action they judge the actor.
They may never have experienced the particular tension of moving between two cultures, feeling American among relatives and Indian among classmates, while trying to satisfy expectations that do not always fit together. Pretending that something does not happen because it is uncomfortable to discuss does not protect a child from it.
Unfortunately, conversations about drugs, sex, depression, anxiety, relationships and emotional distress can become taboo in some families because most Indian parents don’t know how to approach it so they avoid it.
Some fear that admitting a child is struggling will invite questions from relatives or friends. In close-knit communities, information can travel quickly, and the possibility of gossip can be enough to discourage a family from seeking help to keep up with society.
The irony is that parents may be more concerned about what their friends might discover than about what their own children are afraid to disclose.
The research offers reasons for concern. A study examined 89 Asian Indian parents living in the United States and found greater stigma surrounding child mental health services than among the European American and Latino comparison groups. The study was small and based on a convenience sample, so it cannot establish how all Indian American parents think today. It does, however, document a barrier that deserves attention. The researchers also found that parents who had previously used psychotherapy expressed more positive attitudes toward mental health services for children. In other words, familiarity with therapy may help make it more acceptable.
Yet many families continue to treat counseling as a last resort, something required only when a person can no longer function. Some regard it as an admission of weakness. Others believe that prayer, family advice, discipline or willpower should be sufficient.
Faith and family support can be valuable sources of strength, but they need not compete with professional care. We would not ordinarily tell a child with impaired vision to rely on determination rather than an eye examination. We should not assume that emotional suffering can always be resolved through determination alone.
There is also a broader cultural contradiction worth examining. We celebrate the number of Indian Americans who become physicians, engineers, scientists and business leaders, but we rarely celebrate the work of understanding human behavior, emotional development and psychological suffering with the same enthusiasm.
Psychiatry and psychology are essential disciplines, yet conversations about mental health careers and treatment can receive less attention in families that place a premium on certain professional paths. We should be cautious about making broad claims about the specialty choices of Indian American physicians without comparative data, but the underlying question is important: do our professional ambitions leave enough room for us to value the disciplines that help people understand their minds?
The pressure cooker we have created for our children is not necessarily filled with dal. It is filled with expectations, comparisons, demands and the fear of disappointing people they love.
Children may hear that they are never good enough, that their feelings are inconvenient or that failure will cost them the respect of their family. A child who believes that disappointing a parent is intolerable may become skilled at concealing mistakes rather than learning from them.
Our language matters more than we realize. Words such as “should,” “always,” “never,” “can’t,” “blame” and “demand” are thinking errors. They can signal rigid thinking, unrealistic expectations and a tendency to judge ourselves or others in absolute terms. Cognitive behavioral therapy teaches people to recognize and examine such patterns rather than accept every thought as an objective truth.
Consider the difference between telling a child, “You should never disappoint us,” and saying, “We want you to do well, but we also want you to tell us when you are struggling.” The first statement makes disappointment a moral failure. The second preserves expectations while creating room for honesty.
Similarly, telling a teenager, “You always make bad decisions,” turns a particular action into a judgment about the person’s character. Asking, “What happened, and what can we learn from it?” allows parents to address the behavior without defining the child by the mistake. The distinction is crucial. We can hold people accountable for their actions without reducing them to those actions.
Parents who use rigid language are not necessarily irrational people, and children do not develop mental health conditions simply because a parent says the wrong thing. But repeated patterns of criticism, catastrophizing, comparison and conditional approval can contribute to a stressful family environment. We should be willing to examine how we communicate, particularly when the same conversations repeatedly produce fear, defensiveness or withdrawal.
The answer is not to abandon discipline, cultural traditions or parental authority. Children need boundaries, guidance and accountability. They also need to know that they can tell their parents the truth without automatically losing their trust, affection or support. A parent can disapprove of a decision and still listen to the child who made it.
The goal is not to make every difficult conversation comfortable. It is to make those conversations possible.
On this World Mental Health Day, Indian American families should also reconsider what they mean when they say they want their children to be successful. A prestigious degree, a high income and a respected professional title are visible achievements. Emotional stability, healthy relationships, the ability to ask for help and the confidence to acknowledge vulnerability are less visible, but no less important.
We should not assume that a child who earns excellent grades is doing well emotionally. We should not interpret withdrawal as laziness, anxiety as weakness or a request for counseling as evidence that our parenting has failed. Nor should we wait for a crisis before asking whether our children feel safe discussing what is happening in their lives.
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Parents must learn to listen without immediately correcting, comparing or offering advice. They must become willing to hear about experiences they may not understand firsthand. Schools, physicians and community organizations can help by making culturally responsive mental health information and services more accessible. Indian American leaders can help by discussing these issues openly rather than waiting for a tragedy to force the conversation.
Most importantly, we must stop allowing fear of community gossip to determine how we care for our children. The opinions of friends and relatives should not carry more weight than the emotional well-being of a son or daughter. Seeking professional help is not a family disgrace. It is an acknowledgment that some problems require expertise beyond what a parent, however loving, can provide.
Our children do not need parents who understand every aspect of American youth culture. They need parents who are willing to learn about it. They do not need us to have all the answers. They need to believe that asking difficult questions will not make us withdraw our love. And they do not need another generation of adults who confuse silence with strength.
The mantra “grin and bear it” may have helped previous generations endure hardship. It is not a substitute for understanding the psychological pressures facing the next generation. We can honor the sacrifices our parents made while recognizing that the world our children inhabit presents challenges that require different responses.
Perhaps the most important measure of our success as parents is not whether our children fulfill every expectation, we set for them. It is whether they trust us enough to tell us when they cannot.
On October 10, let us make a different commitment. Let us teach our children that resilience does not mean suffering in silence, that asking for help is an act of responsibility, and that no family reputation is worth more than a child’s well-being.
We have spent generations teaching our children how to succeed in the world. It is time we learned how to help them live in it.