The stigma surrounding therapy within people of color, or POC, is a silence rarely broken. We don’t confront it, we don’t explain it and we certainly don’t invite it in. Therapy has been systematically devalued in many POC communities – especially among men – shaped by deeply embedded cultural beliefs, survival pressures and inherited norms. This article explores the collective cultural and gendered dynamics around therapy among ethnic minorities, and the urgent need to break the generational association of seeking help with weakness. Moreover, it seeks a deeper understanding of these harmful stigmas to pave the way for healed communities.
My friend and I were on the phone doing what college students during midterm season do best – venting. Both being Syrian immigrants, we bond over the sacred comfort of being understood. Between the deadlines, unrealistic expectations we put on ourselves, the generational pressure to succeed and the quiet weight of everything we left unspoken, the conversation turned half-sarcastic, half-serious.
“Have you ever thought about going to therapy?” I suggested. There was a pause. “Yeah I probably need it,” he chuckled. “But I’m good, haha.”
Then it struck me – why are people of color, especially men, so quick to push away the idea of therapy? Why is it rarely considered seriously, and so often dismissed before the conversation can even begin?
When I finally made the decision – after a year of hesitation and countless internal debates – to go to therapy, I treated it like a national security level secret. I remember rehearsing excuses about why I was busy, mentally scripting cover stories for what my “meeting” was about and crafting entire fake scenarios in case anyone asked.
Being open about therapy was never an option for me, both consciously and subconsciously. Hiding it was an instinct I followed without realizing I was taking part in a much larger, generational pattern where mental health has long been a cultural taboo. But the more I lied to the people closest to me, the more I began to question the internal shame I carried around something that was, in fact, healing the very parts of myself that had been secretly tearing me apart.
In reality, in many communities of color, mental health has been strictly framed as a matter of weakness, insignificance and shame. Research consistently shows that communities of color face significant cultural, institutional and internal barriers to mental health care. According to a BMC Public Health meta-analysis, racial minorities are found to exhibit higher levels of stigma towards mental health than majority groups. Furthermore, The National Library of Medicine reports that ethnic minorities are the least likely to seek mental health care than among majorities. Clearly, there is a strong correlation between stigma and reduced treatment-seeking within POC communities.
For Alan Haj Hussein, a fourth-year Syrian-Kurdish political science student, mental health is often weaponized within ethnic minority spaces. “Vulnerability makes you prone to attacks, you have to be able to deal with it by yourself,” he said. He described how people fear being perceived as weak, or worse, as “crazy.” “There is a significant ignorance in our communities towards therapy, people think you must be ‘crazy’ to go,” he said, “even Middle Eastern refugees don’t think they need it.” This invisible spectrum of how ‘crazy’ you must be to justify seeking help not only discredits and stigmatizes mental health institutions but reinforces the harmful belief that suffering must reach a breaking point before it’s worthy of attention, ultimately creating a normalized silent threshold of emotional suffering.
I vividly remember feeling the heavy weight in the air after having this conversation with Haj Hussein, a sharp anxiety lingering in the air. It made me realize how abnormal it was for people of color to openly discuss emotions and how much unseen weight we have been conditioned to carry.
These long histories of silence around mental health in ethnic minority families can be traced back to racial trauma. The cultural taboo surrounding mental health visibly originates from a lack of understanding about mental illness, fear of judgment and the instinct to not ask for help – all leading to perpetuating cycles of untreated distress.
Furthermore, not only is mental health care a negative asset among ethnic minorities, but it is very gendered. The quiet struggle and emotional neglect tend to be more common among men of color, where societal stigmas suggest that only weak men talk about emotions.
Aniket Das, a fourth year student majoring in computational biology and neuroscience, expands on how emotional openness is not normalized, and rather viewed as emasculating. “In my family, men don’t deal with emotions, instead it’s taken out on other people, and this is very common in South Asian communities. Dealing with emotions is not viewed as productive” said Das.
Das further elaborates how ethnic minorities, especially immigrants, tend to be faced with the challenge of upwards financial mobility, hindering a healthy perspective of productivity. “There are more important things to be worried about […] talking about your emotions is not the most productive thing you can do,” he said.
This linkage of self-worth with productivity is something very pervasive within POC communities, where generations have been taught that their personal value depends on hard work, excellence and constant achievements. Over time, this mindset reinforces the belief that rest is a privilege, sacrificed at the expense of mental health. These interviews are testimonies to how cultural resistance to therapy isn’t coincidental but shaped by colonial histories, economic pressures and patriarchal doctrines. Ethnic minorities have grown up with and passed down a survival mindset, one that enables a constant dysregulation of the nervous system.
In plenty of developing countries – where many ethnic minorities and immigrants are from – economic scarcity, political instability, corruption and poor systemic structures are strongly present. This creates the constant need to endure hardship, danger and scarcity, thus shaping a survival mindset where families learn to prioritize getting through immediate challenges instead of long-term planning and self-care. In this mindset, vulnerability is seen as a threat and the need to slow down or seek help can hardly be recognized.
When immigrant families settle in new countries, the survival mindset doesn’t get left behind, and is often intensified by the pressures of starting over, identity crises and racial discrimination. Consequently, generations are taught to live and think with the same nervous system hyper-vigilance and survival mechanisms. In this context, therapy can evidently feel unfamiliar and threatening where taking a break or initiating the process of de-suppressing emotions could seem more harmful than beneficial.
Carla Rached, a Lebanese third year psychobiology student, proudly took on this challenge of breaking down the stigma associated with mental health by starting a chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, at UCLA. Growing up in a Middle Eastern household, Rached recognized the lack of mental health discussions and the need to normalize mental health being as important as one’s physical health. “I am stepping in a role that was once foreign to me but advocating for women like myself who may not have had mental health conversations normalized, makes me more confident in talking about it and educating myself and others around this sensitive topic,” she said. As president of NAMI, she is dedicated to making therapy feel safer by increasing awareness, promoting education and dialogue and associating this care as a powerful tool.
Creating an environment where mental health resources and conversations are emphasized and normalized is a step toward abandoning the generational stigma attached to them. If we, as people of color, are to break the stigma, we must see therapy not as a betrayal of cultural values, but as an act of strength and a step forward towards valuing ourselves and our health. Ultimately, it is an act of resistance towards the oppression we are bound to navigate as a community of color.
Even now, my voice shakes when I share my testimony and write about it with a certain reluctance, proving further this internalized stigma of shame and fear surrounding mental health. I am not looking to be praised for what I am doing, but perhaps this can be the first step towards open conversation about self-care without the feeling of shame? Or perhaps the acknowledgment of my private rebellion against generations of silence?
I stand in persistent confusion as to why taking care of one’s mental health is something not to be open about. Confronting one’s internal battles and breaking down harmful cognitive thinking patterns is one of the hardest challenges a human can face. So, to equate emotional openness with weakness is profound irony. To choose to acknowledge and work through our imperfections, rather than the much easier resort of suppressing emotions, coping in self-destructive ways and passing on unhealed pain to the next generation is something to be immensely proud of. Reclaiming the perspectives and the right to care for our minds is a collective responsibility we must seek out with a refusal to pass on pain we were never meant to carry.
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Illustration via Adobe Stock
