Dating back to World War II, the term “model minority” was first used to describe successful Japanese American families in the United States, supporting the assumption that Asian Americans are more successful than other minority groups. The model minority myth can also play a negative role in this narrative.
In other words, people have taught Asian Americans to follow the rules and not cause disruptions in society. Many Asian Americans learn from older generations to live a peaceful life and that mental health difficulties directly result from bad habits. Chang, LMFT, CCTP, a board chair of the Asian Mental Health Collective (AMHC), notes that this may be because many cultures are rooted in Confucianism. Stigma is a common obstacle that Asian communities may deal with. However, getting mental health support may be especially difficult for Asian communities. “With a history of physical displacement and identity crisis from war and discrimination, many Asian Americans find themselves passing their unresolved trauma in ways that may not be obvious at first,” says Soo Jin Lee, LMFT, an executive director of the Yellow Chair Collective and co-author of “Where I Belong: Healing Trauma and Embracing Asian American Identity. Although experts first recognized it in 1966 among children of Holocaust survivors, research has broadened to include other groups, such as American Indian tribes and the families of Vietnam War veterans. Essentially, it’s trauma that carries on from previous generations who have experienced tragic events, such as war or famine. Intergenerational trauma has many definitions, but the concept is pretty linear. Throughout this journey, I’ve been able to identify the role that intergenerational trauma has played in my family, along with its impact on my life and who I am as a person. They spent days huddled among strangers and eventually made it to their final destination of Minnesota, where a large portion of my family still resides.Īlmost five decades later, I’m in extensive cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to manage my anxious thoughts, all-or-nothing thinking, and reoccurring guilt of living life the way I want instead of the way I was taught. In 1975, my teenage mom followed her lead when she fled Vietnam with her siblings, my great-grandma, and my grandma to escape political oppression and poverty. She taught herself how to read and write while selling food on the street for extra money. Growing up, my grandma was fiercely independent. In the 1950s, my widowed great-grandma managed to escape North Vietnam with her three children, including my grandma, on the last plane to South Vietnam. The truth is that I come from a line of resilient women who learned to survive despite their circumstances. Anything that hinted at the implication of struggle was a sign of failure. I was raised through moments that my mom turned into one important lesson: Never show weakness. The Judicial Commission has created a list of resources available about the nature and impacts of intergenerational trauma.Looking back on my life, this was a pattern in my home. More recently, the 2019 Family is Culture report, an independent review of Aboriginal Children and Young People in out of home care, (Professor Megan Davis, Chair) recommended that the Judicial Commission provide educational resources for judicial officers about research on intergenerational trauma (Rec 114). The RCIADIC recommended that judicial officers participate in appropriate training designed to explain contemporary Aboriginal society, customs and traditions with an emphasis on the historical and social factors which contribute to the disadvantaged position of many Aboriginal people today (Rec 96).
The effects of intergenerational trauma, closely connected with the impacts of colonisation, domestic violence, poverty, substance abuse and mental health issues are accepted in medico-legal circles as causative of First Nations people’s over-representation in the criminal justice system. Today, the underlying issues are characterised as the impact of intergenerational trauma. Thirty years ago, in 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) Final Report identified “underlying issues” as contributing to the over-representation of First Nations people in custody and commensurate deaths in custody.