‘Perfect storm’ of anti-Asian violence, bias in NY fuels mental health crisis

By Arya Sundaram

On May 29, 2023

The executive director of the New York-based Asian American Federation says the community is facing a mental health crisis.

Jo-Ann Yoo says that hate crimes, fear and discrimination are continuing to buffet the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. She adds that these concerns are compounded by increasing difficulty in finding support amid a shrinking pool of available mental health counselors who speak the “preferred language” and have the cultural competency to work with Asian American and Pacific Islander clientele.

“The anti-Asian violence, the joblessness, the homelessness … all of this perfect storm of so many vulnerable people — not just physically, but emotionally, mentally – it is creating a crisis,” Yoo told Gothamist.

The anti-Asian violence, the joblessness, the homelessness … all of this perfect storm of so many vulnerable people — not just physically, but emotionally, mentally – it is creating a crisis.

Jo-Ann Yoo, executive director, Asian American Federation

Yoo wrote about the community’s “mental health gap” in a recent column posted on Gotham Gazette, written along with Luna Liu, a manager with a nonprofit health care insurer. One of the data points they reference, taken from a MetroPlusHealth survey released earlier this month, is that only 45% of Asian women said they know a community-based organization providing mental health services in their preferred language.

The Asian American Federation has been on the frontlines of local efforts to combat anti-Asian bigotry and hate. It takes in reports, organizes self-defense training, raises awareness, and marshals citizen-led public safety crews.

Yoo’s warning comes as politicians across the country have stepped up criticism of China and the China-based social media behemoth TikTok, and follows a pandemic-linked spike in anti-Asian hate crimes and bigotry, including some high-profile attacks in New York.

In New York, complaints of anti-Asian hate crime made to the NYPD grew to 27 in 2020 and surged to 131 in 2021, but since dropped to 83 in 2022 — still far above pre-pandemic levels. Separately, the collaborative Stop AAPI Hate report last year counted more than 11,500 anti-Asian bias incidents nationwide since March 2020.

Gothamist sat down with Yoo to talk about mental health, the current state of anti-Asian hate crimes, and the people and politics surrounding the issues. The conversation with Yoo has been lightly edited.

Yoo: There is more openness for people to talk about their anxieties.

Oftentimes for our community, there is a dearth of experts and resources. They don’t get to talk to people in their own language, people with a lot of cultural expertise.

With our mental health clinics, Asian-led, Asian-serving – before you could get an appointment in two, three weeks. Now it’s months. They are overwhelmed. They are swamped.

This is a moment when our community has realized, “Oh, I’ve gotta talk about these things. This is terrible.” And I think that’s really great. It’s created an opening.

Do we have the capacity to do this? No, we don’t have enough clinicians who speak the language; we don’t have enough resources. I need money. We need to hire more people who can speak the language.

We can’t do a cookie-cutter approach: “I need you to have this degree, I need you to have this degree.” Oftentimes, you just need to bring in somebody who knows how to navigate trauma situations, be able to talk about trauma. You don’t need a Ph.D., you don’t need an M.D.

(The Asian American Federation keeps an online directory of mental health providers who speak over 17 Asian languages. More resources are available on the NYC Coalition for Asian American Mental Health website.)

What have you thought so far of the government – local, state and national – response?

Gov. Kathy Hochul, she’s the first one who threw in money, real money. Three million dollars is a big deal for our community. The safety programs. It was: “You know your community best. Go do the programming that we need to do.”

I value my relationship with Attorney General Letitia James. She’s like, “If you have a problem, call my website.” I talk to her staff regularly.

I had a shaky relationship with City Hall, the previous City Hall. But part of it is there wasn’t a playbook. I know what happened to the Arab Muslim community after 9/11. I guess the notes didn’t get passed to the next administration. So, then we go back to reinventing the wheel.

We were also in lockdown, and during our global pandemic, that made it really hard. I think I need to be gracious here. We do need some post-mortem and we do need some assessment.

But I think the reality is, we need more funding. They need to make funding easily accessible. You still have to go through all these bureaucratic loops. Some of the groups doing the safety work now, doing the community-building work, they’re immigrant groups. They don’t have the capacity to sit down and write a 20-page government proposal.

I don’t think the powers that be take our situation seriously. That is still my frustration. If people want to report to law enforcement, we know that there are still obstacles to reporting. Sometimes people wanna go report to their police precincts, but there might not be somebody who speaks that language, who can take those cases.

I also hear the anti-Asian country sentiments of our elected leaders in Congress, like anti-TikTok, anti-China. You can have disagreements with foreign countries. But the problem is that those sentiments get transferred on to Asian Americans. We’re gonna have to pay the price, and we know that, and we’re watching and we are scared.

For the victims and family members of victims, how are they holding up in the aftermath?

We’re all trying to cope.They’re all trying to cope. I don’t know, how do you heal? You are violated in your own city, in your own neighborhood. I don’t know how you heal from that.

The victims that we’ve assisted, victims that we work with, they do deal with a lot of PTSD. We do check in with the victims of violence to say, how are you doing? And sometimes the calls end with a lot of tears and them telling us, “I’m afraid. I’m afraid to go outside.” Those are the times that I can call NYPD to request, can we have extra patrol in the neighborhood?

It’s preventing the victims from living their full lives. Because it requires you to go outside. And if you’ve been attacked on the subway, you’re afraid to ride the subway. If you’re attacked on the street, how do you go for a walk? The PTSD is real.

This is how we all have to live: You have to trust people. You have to trust your fellow New Yorkers that they’re not gonna harm you. For them, that trust has been violated in the worst way. How do you regain that? How do you regain the trust in that somebody isn’t going to be around the corner and punch you in the face?

But with all the victims, you have to think about what is their trauma? What is the invisible scar that they’re holding onto?

How did you deal with taking in all of these stories from other Asian American people who’ve been attacked?

There were days when I told my staff I have to come to work, but I dreaded getting up out of bed in the morning. I would just lie in bed and read the emails coming in, some Facebook message coming in, at all hours.

But if I could listen and offer empathy and compassion, then that was what I had to do.

This piece was republished from the Gothamist.