SOVA Blog

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Asian American Mental Health Resources

September 11, 2020 in LINKS

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This week, we wanted to highlight how mental health affects Asian Americans. Asian American teen girls have the highest rates of depressive symptoms of any ethnic and gender group, Southeast Asian Americans experience high stress due to the threat of deportations, and Asian adolescents who face racial discrimination are more likely to experience depressive symptoms. Given the increase in anti-Asian racism due to COVID, these depressive symptoms may have likely increased as well.

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Culture also plays a big role. Many AAPI are first or second generation immigrants, and by coming from cultures that have strong stigmas against mental health – or don’t believe that mental illness exists at all – it can confuse Asian Americans teenagers growing up in an environment that still stigmatizes mental health, but still acknowledges it and is having a conversation about it. These teens may have been told by their family that mental illness isn’t real, and showing symptoms is a weakness and can easily be changed by working harder and having a stronger sense of self-will.

We wanted to share a few resources that may help those who identify as AAPI navigate their mental health in a space that specifically relates to them and the issues that they go through as AAPI. If you or someone you know identifies as an AAPI, you can check these out, but don’t feel like you’re limited to just these resources.

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Asian American Psychological Association The AAPA was founded back in 1972 and aims to educate and provide resources for AAPI on topics specifically for the community. They have several divisions because it’s so large, including a Division of Students and those with multiple heritages. Their resource page includes a lot of links, including some for LGBT AAPI.

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Psychology Today The website is already a great tool to help find therapists in your area and includes many features and filters to help you find someone who is best for you. One of these features includes being able to choose minority therapists. The link sends you to find an Asian therapist, and some minorities have found that talking to someone who also represents them makes them more comfortable.

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Personal Essays Organizations and research can be a great place for support, but sometimes the best resources are listening and reading about those who’ve experienced what you have experienced too. It’s almost looking like into a mirror, where your reflection speaks to you about things that you couldn’t quite put into words, or say things that you haven’t been able to say aloud. You can check out a few here.

Do you identify as AAPI? What are your experiences like with mental health and how those in your community perceive it? Do you have any resources you want to share that you’ve tried?

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Meme-ing About the Worst Year Ever

September 10, 2020 in COVID-19, Social Media Guide

Memes, quite honestly, can be a great coping mechanism. Using humor as a way to deal with terrible things going on allow us to find some sort of happiness among the sea of bad, and using humor and memes online can help disrupt doomscrolling. Many have found that memes can serve as a bonding activity in a way, allowing all of us who have been affected by negative things to share a laugh and make us feel less alone.  Studies have even found that those with mental illnesses are more likely to enjoy memes and find that it helps them with their symptoms.

And if any time needs humor and memes to help make a really hard situation to feel the slightest bit lighter, it’s 2020. You’ve probably come across some sort of meme about every single terrible thing that has happened this year, from the dramatic “well what else does 2020 have in store for us” and to the purely chaotic images that best describe what it’s like to live through this year. There’s the “mentally, I’m here” meme and the memes about participating about endless, torturous Zoom calls. 

If you were on the Internet and social media back in 2016, this may all seem familiar. Like 2020, 2016 was also regarded as “the worst year ever,” and the year itself became its own meme. Like 2020, 2016 had its own string of important, mostly negative, world events that you couldn’t avoid encountering on social media, and it felt that the only way to deal with what felt like constant bad news was to joke about it. 

However, others may find memes about difficult situations to be insensitive at best, and harmful and belittling human lives at their worst. Listing the high number of US deaths as a result of COVID-19 as just another thing wrong with this year dismisses their lives and how those families were impacted. Making a meme out of Breonna Taylor’s murder isn’t really calling attention anymore, but instead using a Black woman’s death for clout. And for those who have been directly affected by these issues, seeing their pain reduced to a joke can hurt them mentally and have them feel that their feelings don’t matter.

Of course, there’s no way to regulate memes online. It’s impossible. And it isn’t wrong to enjoy them and use them as a way of having some kind of stress relief during a really difficult time. But when deciding what memes to share and what you find amusing, it’s also important to take a step back and question what these memes are addressing and how they’re addressing it.

How do you feel about 2020 memes? Have you been using humor to cope this year? How have you been using social media in 2020?

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Voices of Youth

September 4, 2020 in COVID-19, LINKS

A lot of the times, it feels like people who speak for adolescents and how and why they feel the way they do…aren’t adolescents. While some of this makes sense – therapists and mental health experts for example have the background to explain why adolescents may experience the things they do – it can get frustrating seeing news stories and reports talking about what adolescents are going through without actually talking to them.

Organizations like Unicef’s Voices of Youth are starting to give platforms for young people to speak up about how they feel and their own experiences. As a global platform, it gives those between the ages of 13-24 a space to create content about whatever they want, and is even available in Spanish, Arabic, and French!

We specifically wanted to highlight a section dedicated to talking about going to school from home. Along with tips about how to protect yourself and cope with the stressors that are likely coming from going back to school during this time, the page also features short blurbs from adolescents all over the world and how they’re coping and feeling too. Hopefully, this might give you some coping tools too and make you feel less alone during this transition.

Have you returned back to school? Whether it’s virtual, in-person, or a hybrid, how have you been feeling? What are things that you would change?

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Digital Overload

September 3, 2020 in Social Media Guide

How many devices do you have? Do you have a phone, laptop, tablet, and wearable? How about an ebook reader? How many social media accounts do you have? 

If all those questions feel overwhelming, that’s because the amount of technology and social media accounts we own are. There are so many ways to be connected now, and the ways we can connect are constantly increasingly, and currently, this is out of necessity.

With most schools starting school remotely (and most workplaces continuing to be remote), your screen time has most likely skyrocketed, like, even more than it already has since the pandemic, and even before the pandemic started. The glare of the bright screens, the pressure to socialize and pay attention to important tasks all the time, and the lack of separation between work/school and home is probably getting to you, if it hasn’t already.

You may have likely heard of the negative effects of constantly being connected on electronic devices. There are the physical effects like trouble sleeping at night, but too much screen time can affect us mentally as well, like constantly making us compare ourselves to others and increased feelings of loneliness. 

Most of these studies and results come from adolescents using their devices and social media accounts for personal use, however. While there isn’t as much information about how attending school and/or work digitally can affect us, having to spend all this time online out of necessity is also going to affect us mentally. You may feel stressed to be working all the time and then feel guilty if you have to take a break, or you may find yourself comparing how school online is affecting you to what seems to be the perfect student in your online class acting as if being online is no big deal. You may find yourself frustrated and on edge at how one of your colleagues or peers is acting on video, or you may feel self-conscious from having to see your face on screen all the time. 

And if all that information feels overwhelming, that’s because it is.

So how do you manage all this technology and need to communicate online, especially when you have no choice but to constantly be online? First off, stepping away from screens is absolutely vital. Your school may have designated break times throughout the day, and while it’s tempting to go on your phone, try not to spend your time away from your computer screen focusing on a different screen. Those who work from home shouldn’t feel guilty if they need to take a few minutes away from their job and computer either. 

At least once an hour, try to get up and walk around whatever space is available near you. We also recommend that these mini-walks throughout the school and/or work day include doing something to better yourself, such as getting a glass of water in the kitchen or splashing cool water on your face. You also might want to use the mini-break to also clean up a small space around you to give you a better peace of mind. 

Realistically, we know it’s impossible to avoid your phone and/or watching TV when you’re done with work and school too (especially if you have to do homework online too). However, you might want to try designating certain times for your screen and certain times off, using the latter to possibly explore other hobbies to try! 

As we hit yet another transition as a result of COVID, we hope that you’re able to adjust and find a way to balance not just your professional and personal screen time, but the time for yourself offline too.

Has your screen time increased recently? For those back in school and doing it virtually, how have you tried to adjust? Have you been able to give yourself time offline? What recommendations do you have to taking breaks from your phone or computer?

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The Green Ribbon Library

August 28, 2020 in LINKS

The Green Ribbon Library is a developing platform designed to give adolescents, parents, caregivers, and more the opportunity to view educational videos on a variety of topics that can impact the mental health of teens and young adults. By watching these short videos about topics such as ADHD, mental health in athletes, cultural differences in mental health, spectrum disorders, viewers can gain insight about how all of these can affect an adolescent’s mental health and how to either cope with or support the adolescents in their lives. 

The website even has an ability to create an account so users can save the videos that are most relevant to them and share them with those they feel can benefit as well. You can check out the site here!

What resources have you used to learn about mental health? What topics do you think are related to mental health – especially in adolescents – that don’t get talked about that you would like to learn more about?

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Going Private

August 27, 2020 in Social Media Guide

You may think of two different things when you think about social media. You may think that social media makes everyone an open book, spilling all their secrets and sharing too much information so you know where they are, what they’re eating, and who they’re with at any given moment. You may alternatively think that social media is fake and controlled, and that people on social media only share what they think will get them the most attention.

Regardless, social media is a place where we know that almost any and everyone can see the content we create and share, and with that may come a need to make sure that they think what we put up is valid. It can be stressful to always think about pleasing everyone, and the fear that someone you don’t know as well (or don’t even know at all!) can find your content and respond with a negative comment can be anxiety-inducing.

Fortunately, most, if not nearly every social media platform comes with an option to go private, or at the very least, control who sees your profile and your accounts. Twitter and Instagram give you the ability to lock your account completely and limit who follows you, because you have to approve those who request to follow you. Snapchat has the option for you to only allow friends you add to see your content, and Facebook lets you decide how much anyone can see on your account – friends included.

Having this kind of control and privacy can give you a peace of mind: the people you approve to follow your account are those you trust, and you don’t have to feel like you’re trying to get their approval all of the time. There’s also the safety aspect too: only having a few people have access to your information means that it’s less likely to get out and receive unwanted attention. Overall, there’s been an increase in demand from adolescents to make accounts automatically private for these reasons, alongside others.

Take finstas. While often regarded as a sillier private space, adolescents say that they feel more like their genuine selves and don’t hesitate to hit the “share” button because they’re comfortable with those following them. And while silly, they’re still a safe place. Queer adolescents have commented that having this separate account takes the weight off of their shoulders about receiving hateful comments or those they’re not close with speculating about their sexuality. 

While getting likes and comments may be validating, they can also be damaging to your mental health and in comparing yourself to others. Private accounts can give you a space to fully be yourself without worrying about these statistics and may increase your enjoyment on social media as a whole.

Are your accounts locked? Are there some that are unlocked and some that you keep completely private? How do you think limiting the people you have follow you impacts  your social media use?

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Comics About Living with Anxiety and Depression

August 21, 2020 in LINKS

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. They may be obvious based on what the artist is trying to depict, but sometimes they may be words that perfectly capture how we feel, without even realizing it. 

Comics and art about mental health and living with mental illnesses have increasingly become popular, especially on social media. You may have seen Jonny Sun’s drawings, which provide cute, optimistic comfort and advice for things that may get us down, or Alex Norris’ Oh No comics, which can capture the various levels of anxieties that suddenly fill us with dread. We collected a few Instagram accounts by artists who draw quick comics that talk about mental health and living with anxiety and/or depression that you can follow. They might make you laugh, if at least smile, or at the very least, reassure you that you aren’t alone in the things that might trouble you.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCJ8GvslC20/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CC8qMYSjjVC/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCiYxwchsRa/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CChQNvenRkL/

Do you draw? Do you follow any artists on social media? Do you have any recommendations for comics who draw about mental health?

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Posting About the Hustle

August 20, 2020 in Social Media Guide

It is incredibly easy to be busy nowadays. If anything, it’s encouraged. Our culture has told us that we should take advantage of all of the 24 hours in the day so we can be our best selves and as successful as we can possibly be. The time in between classes and/or work should be filled with time working out or learning a new skill or networking. Being busy is a good thing, and constantly being on that grind should be the goal.

Quarantine has been no exception to this. In fact, you may remember the beginning of lockdown, where everyone talked about using the time indoors as an opportunity to pick up new hobbies, work on projects that they didn’t have time for, and somehow be even busier than they were before.

And because we can’t avoid it nowadays, social media takes this to another level. Social media gives us several platforms to talk about how busy we are. It can be chronicling everything we’re doing that day on our stories, posting about still working on an assignment with a 3:00 AM timestamp, or even just texting friends long paragraphs about how much we need to do.

Letting people know how busy we are isn’t a new thing though. You may have had face-to-face conversations where a friend goes off for minutes on end about the millions of things they have to do in response to a simple “how are you?” Talking and showcasing how much someone needs to do is known as “busy bragging,” and while very rarely intentional, comes with a lot of unintentional effects.

Most of the time, when we want to talk about how busy we are, it’s because we just need a reason to let out everything we’re going through and getting it out in the open. However, there is some satisfaction and validation people may feel whenever they talk about how overwhelmed and busy they are and want to keep seeking that out. In turn, being on the receiving end of the busy bragging can make the listener feel like they’re not doing enough and need to be on the same level as the busy person.

Social media can heighten these feelings of incompetence, competition, and just generally bad feelings about yourself for not doing enough. While it can help by posting and commiserating in misery with others who are doing the same assignments and studying for the same tests, social media can also increase our desire for that validation when people respond or even just see how busy we are. By seeing posts about peers and friends getting ahead on assignments and activities – even if you’re not taking the same classes or in the same field – you may feel ashamed that you’re not doing the same amount of work, or that you need to work harder, or your lifestyle isn’t worth sharing about because it’s not as “productive.”

It’s totally fine to post that pile of books and papers drowning your desk and computer during finals week. It’s also okay to post progress pictures about things you’re passionate about or proud of, like yourself post-workout or that thesis that you’re so close to finishing. At the same time though, constantly posting about being busy can ironically make you less productive since it’s taking time away from what you need to do and can not only overwhelm you by trying to come up with the perfect way to talk about how busy you are, but can also overwhelm followers and friends you follow you who are possibly going through the same thing.

At the end of the day, balance is key whenever posting about anything. It’s also important to remember that you don’t need to force yourself to be busy all the time, and being productive and hustling also includes time for yourself and taking breaks where you need to. These breaks can include social media, where you hopefully don’t have to see a stream of posts about that paper you’re taking a break from and can relax with cute animals instead.

Have you ever posted about how busy you are online? Do you usually post when you’re busy? Do you see posting about being busy as a form of stress relief, or as something else?

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Practicing Radical Self-Care

August 14, 2020 in LINKS

Self-care has become a term that always pops up when talking about mental health and wellness. The most common image is that of meditating, taking a bath, or doing a face mask. And while this is great, self-care is so much more than that. While these moments of nurture are helpful, self-care is a radical act for many as they learn to put their needs, emotions, and well-being first.

You may have heard the name Angela Davis pop up a lot recently. As an activist for Black lives and education for decades, she well knows the toll that not just activism, but living as a Black woman can have mentally and physically. We wanted to include the video below where she talks about radical self-care and why it’s so important to be able to prioritize ourselves and do what we need to do to make sure that we’re okay. She specifically talks about this is important for those who participate in activism (and can be prone to burnout because of how heavy the content can be as well as taking care of others) and those from marginalized groups who have historically been told that they do not matter.

Check it out below!

How do you practice self-care? Is self-care something that’s important to you?

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Do You Have a Wearable?

August 13, 2020 in Social Media Guide

The idea of having technology in your watch seems like something out of a science fiction novel at first, with the screen popping up in the air in a bright neon blue or green. Even twenty years ago, a digital watch with a timer on it felt super futuristic. But today, with at least 1 in 5 people wearing, and actively using, some sort of wearable on their wrist, it’s increasingly becoming the norm to have a mini-computer on you at all times.

Wearables (literally wearable technology) most often include things like smartwatches or a wearable fitness tracker (like a Fitbit). They’re designed to connect with your phone through an app and help keep track of things like your heart rate, act like a remote with your music, and can keep you connected by sending you notifications from your phone. The more complex they get, the more they can do, like answer phone calls. 

This is where it gets tricky, though. Being constantly connected to your device can have its benefits – for example, you can know right away if an emergency contact is reaching out or if there’s something urgent you need to respond to right away. It can help you develop goals and keep track of habits, including those that can benefit your mental health. For example, you can set goals to get a certain amount of steps a day to encourage activity and making sure you’re not staying in one place, and like we talked about last week, you can keep track of your sleeping habits. 

Wearables have also increasingly become methods of improving and monitoring mental health too. Apple Watches has an app on their device that helps you with deep breathing, and many mental health experts and researchers are starting to use wearables as a way to track patients’ mental health and keep an eye out for symptoms. If something seems troubling – like constantly high heart rates or prolonged periods of sleep, experts can reach out to the wearer to see how they’re doing. 

Constantly being connected to your device and technology can also be really stressful, too. Notifications can already heighten your anxiety, and getting them the second they happen can make that anxiety feel even higher. It’s easy to put your phone on “do not disturb” and put it in another room to avoid notification anxiety, but that’s not really a solution if your wrist is buzzing the second you get a text. Additionally, constantly getting notifications can be distracting from work you might be doing, and the anxiety with not getting that work done can start building up. There might be the opposite effect as well: knowing that you could be getting notifications but aren’t getting any can make you start worrying that no one wants to reach out to you, which can then lead into snowball thinking about your relationships and whether people like you or not.

If you lean into more perfectionist tendencies, those habit and goal trackers can cause you to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression as well. If you’re not meeting the goals you set for yourself or dismiss reminders from your wearable to accomplish a task, you may feel like that’s reflective of your self-worth and your ability (or what you think is a lack thereof) of your productivity.

So, with all of this, wearables can both benefit and harm your mental health, just like any other technological device. Luckily, there are some solutions that you can try out if you do feel like wearables might be increasing your anxiety. For example, you can choose which apps send you notifications (do you really need to get a buzz on your wrist about a sale?), and it might lead you to make the decision to mute group chats so you’re not constantly getting reminders on your wearable. You can also choose not to use a a wearable as a habit tracker if you feel that it would only cause more stress.

As technology continues to grow, our access to them continues to increase. Finding the balance between what is useful and what can be stressful depends on the person, but it’s a learning process as we continue to adjust to how much more connected to technology we have become.

Do you own a wearable? Do you think it’s affected your mental health in anyway? What do you like or dislike about it?

Our team also has a study that looks into wearable/smartphone use and monitoring mental health! If you, or someone else you know, is interested, you can check it out here.

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