I grew up in a house where both my parents were doctors. Doctors recognize the body’s failures and fixations. One would surely think that they would recognize when the mind needed the same care. However, that’s not what I saw. In a household built on medicine, mental health was something we didn’t talk about. Being a doctor doesn’t make one immune to the culture. It just gives them better language to avoid the conversation.
I remember someone I knew who was struggling; 15-year-old me could recognize it. It wasn’t subtle, yet the adults around them chose not to see it. They looked past it, explained it away, or waited for it to pass. It wasn’t just the adults; kids my age were insensitive to it, too. One moment from school stayed with me. A classmate had a panic attack, and instead of concern, he was met with a word — pagal— just a label meant to shut the moment down. That word did more damage than the panic attack.
When I decided to study psychology, it became its own conversation. People suggested other, “better” things I could study instead. This gentle redirection was just discomfort wearing a helpful face. Something about all of this always felt wrong. That’s when it hit me: we can build all the resources in the world, but none of it matters if the stigma stays intact. Access isn’t the same as acceptance. Before people can find support, it has to be safe for them to want it.
Today, my generation has gotten better at talking about mental health openly. That openness doesn’t automatically transfer to the people raising us. Where I come from, parents often get their kids in the door of a clinic, but stop there. They don’t know how to support them once they’re home. There’s shame underneath it too, enough that if someone asks where their child is going, a parent will lie rather than say “therapy” out loud.
So, we end up with a strange gap: kids are willing to talk, and parents don’t have the tools to listen.
This is why I care so much about mental health in the South Asian community. I am committed not just to resources, but to dismantling the shame underneath them. Giving parents language, not just kids awareness. Refusing to let a word like pagal be the last word when someone needed care instead.
I don’t have this all figured out. But I know where it started for me, and I don’t want it to be the whole story for the generation after mine.
As part of SAMHIN’s mission to encourage open conversations about mental health in the South Asian community, we invited Mahveen Wani, a passionate advocate for mental health awareness, to share her perspective on stigma associated with mental illness in South Asians.
By Mahveen Wani
Undergraduate student at Bryn Mawr College, studying psychology and aspiring to be a researcher in developmental and child psychology. Dedicated SAMHIN volunteer.
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