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Congratulations to Dr. Cindy H. Liu, Ph.D and Dr. Huijun Li for receiving this year’s AAPA-APF Okura Mental Health Leadership Foundation Fellowship. The AAPA-APF Okura Mental Health Leadership Foundation Fellowship supports psychology’s efforts to benefit the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community research on issues specific to the AAPI community, training of providers to support the AAPI community, service/practice programs for the AAPI community.

The AAPA-APF Okura Mental Health Leadership Foundation Fellowship increases understanding, treatment, services and training to help generate a healthy, robust, and highachieving AAPI population. One $20,000 research grant annually.

The purpose of Dr Liu’s and Dr. Li’s project is to evaluate the mental health knowledge and attitudes of parents of Chinese American youth and to determine the efficacy of psycho-educational workshops on community groups of Chinese American parents. The proposal is concerned with parents of Chinese American youth for the following reasons. First, Asian Americans, including Chinese Americans, tend not to utilize mental health services unless problems escalate and become very severe. In particular, the stigma of mental illness plays a prominent role in how parents may recognize and obtain help for their children. Second, the onset of severe mental illnesses such as psychosis and depression largely occurs during adolescence, a period during which parents may attribute changes in mental health status to typical developmental changes such as transitions with social or school functioning.

Given that Chinese American parents are often receptive to parent education programs aimed toward improving their children’s functioning (especially their academic functioning), the propose to design and conduct psycho-educational workshops that increase mental health knowledge and improve mental health attitudes. Dr. Liu and Dr. Li are particularly interested in evaluating the design of a culturally based workshop (e.g., a workshop that targets culturally based concerns (e.g., stigma) and goals (e.g. academic achievement). Through such a workshop, the hope is to promote mental health knowledge in Chinese American parents of youth that could be applied across different cultural communities.

Dr. Liu is the Director of Multicultural Research, Commonwealth Research Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Assistant Research Professor, Department of Psychology at University of Massachusetts Boston.

Dr. Huijun Li, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Psychology at Florida A&M University and Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Two instances of stereotypes of Asian Americans have recently surfaced in the media. One involved media coverage of the book, Battle hymn of the tiger mother by Yale Law School Professor Amy Chua. The media coverage of Chua’s book focused on Chinese American parents who are strict, critical, and emphasize their children’s academic success. A Wall Street Journal essay by Chua on the book is entitled, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”.

The second stereotype involved the exclusion of Asian Americans by the National Research Council (NRC) in their rankings of the diversity of doctoral programs. Non-Asian ethnic minority students, women, and international faculty and students were included in the rankings. The implication is that the achievements and characteristics of Asian Americans are on par with those of European Americans and for this reason, Asian Americans do not bring diversity to doctoral programs.

These instances that highlight academic success are stereotypic because not all Asian Americans fit these stereotypes. However, it could be argued in both cases that the stereotypes are positive and not harmful. Academic success, whether it be among children or among students and faculty in doctoral programs, is laudable. Nevertheless, harsh parenting is not uniformly effective, and may create undue pressure and have harmful psychological consequences. A harmful effect of the apparent success of Asian Americans in higher education is invisibility in the NRC data. However, many Asian Americans have unique cultures and experiences that enhance the diversity of institutions as much as the cultures and experiences of any other minority group.

Seemingly positive stereotypes of Asian Americans as academically successful also have not resulted in acceptance into mainstream American society. Research by psychologists Thierry Devos and Mahzarin Banaji suggests that Asian Americans are viewed as less American than members of other ethnic groups in the U.S. Academic success does not immunize Asian Americans from the discrimination that targets all ethnic minority groups in the U.S. Discrimination toward Asian Americans ranges from microaggressions such as the question “where are you from?” to institutional discrimination, such as systematic exclusion from leadership positions based on perceptions of culturally-based personality characteristics of inscrutability and passivity. Moreover, Asian American academic success may be perceived as threatening and some would contend that Asian Americans should not receive special attention because this would constitute an unfair advantage.

Stereotypes of any group are inherently inaccurate because they try to shoehorn all members of the group being stereotyped into a single conception while ignoring the wide diversity within the group.  Moreover, some stereotypes are simply wrong and are perpetuated by the majority group in order to bias perception of the targeted group. Asians in the U.S. are from at least 30 different national and cultural backgrounds and there also is much individual diversity within any Asian American group. There certainly are unique, positive characteristics of Asian American cultures that may enhance well-being, including academic achievement. However, an exclusive focus on the academic achievements of Asian Americans has rendered them invisible at times, threatening at other times, and overlooks their needs as a minority group. Indeed, there are many Asian Americans that fit the exact opposite of the academic success stereotype, with many struggling academically and living in poverty. The Asian American Psychological Association encourages a balanced consideration of both the strengths and needs of the over 15 million diverse people of Asian ancestry in the U.S.