Asian Mental Health Collective

About the Organization:

AMHC works to increase awareness of and access to mental health resources for Asian communities, equip Asian clinicians with the support needed to best serve the community, and create open dialogue and space for connection around our shared mental health journeys as Asians.

The Issue:

By 2055, Asian Americans are expected to reflect the largest growing racial/ethnic immigrant population within the United States (Pew Research Center, 2021). Despite this growing trend, AAPIs have some of the worst mental health outcomes of any racial group within the United States. Compared to other racial/ethnic groups, Asian Americans are also least likely to seek treatment or services for mental health, three times less likely than their white counterparts. AAPIs are also more likely to underreport symptoms of mental illness and perceive greater stigma towards mental health disorders.

At the same time, Asian Americans age 15-24 are the only racial group with suicide as their leading cause of death. Misconceptions, such as the Model Minority Myth that promote ideas that Asian Americans do not experience health, social, or educational barriers, further perpetuates a disconnect in understanding and addressing Asian American mental health. As a result, AAPI communities face a mental health crisis that is not adequately being addressed by existing mental health systems.

Despite this clear need, accessing mental healthcare is more difficult than ever. According to the APA in 2022, 60% of therapists in the US indicated they no longer have openings to take new patients. Additionally, cost is a major barrier to accessing mental health treatment – even with health insurance, many individuals report difficulty in finding a therapist that accepts a particular insurance, while paying out of pocket or even for co-pays for mental health appointments can be cost-prohibitive.

The Solution:

As a national organization, AMHC tackles the mental health crisis facing Asian communities by building supportive community spaces, increasing access to treatment, and supporting practitioners to better serve Asian clients. Through our quarterly online support groups, our community meetups, annual TransformAsian conference, and our moderated 61,000 member Facebook group (Subtle Asian Mental Health) we are building safe spaces for young Asians to share, support one another and normalize discussions of mental health.

Secondly, AMHC provides access to quality and culturally relevant mental health treatment for the Asian diaspora. AMHC places an emphasis on supporting and connecting our community with Asian therapists as we believe shared cultural context can be crucial for building trust and understanding in a therapeutic space. AMHC built and maintains the largest directory of Asian American therapists, allowing those in need to search over 2000 providers based on location, ethnicity, language, modality etc. Our Lotus Therapy Fund connects recipients with an Asian therapist and pays in full for a minimum of 8 sessions. We bring together clinicians working to heal and treat our community to learn from one another, connecting and amplifying the next generation of Asian therapists through mentorships, free trainings and workshops with continuing education credits. AMHC also uses our large social media following to amplify discussions of mental health from a uniquely Asian lens, dispelling the myth that therapy is inaccessible and un-Asian.

Through this work, AMHC recognizes a growing awareness, particularly from younger generations within Asian diaspora communities, that mental health access is desperately needed and important.

The AMHC community is therefore equipped to seek culturally competent treatment and find support from Asian peers. Because robust social support aids recovery from serious mental illness, our program can also increase the efficacy of clinical treatment.

Manisha G. Bewtra, AICP

Planning, Mobility, and Development Advisor to Tucson Mayor Regina Romero

Manisha Bewtra, AICP (she/her) is Mayor Romero’s Planning, Mobility, and Development Advisor. In this role, she leverages her passion for planning for thriving, healthy, and inclusive communities with her love for policy-making and politics as the Mayor’s liaison on transportation and land use issues. Manisha is an experienced public process facilitator and project manager and works collaboratively with the Mayor’s team and city departments to apply an equity lens to all city initiatives.
Manisha has built her career on bringing divergent perspectives together, facilitating conversations around change, and generating data-informed solutions that move communities forward. She is driven by public service and champions equitable policies and inclusive community engagement.
Prior to her current role, she worked at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Boston as a senior regional planner and the manager of the analytics team, at the Massachusetts Housing Partnership where she was a statewide technical assistance provider, as an adjunct city planning instructor for Master’s degree program courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and at Arizona State University, and in municipal government and nonprofit community development organizations in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Chandler, Arizona.
Manisha has served on various equity-focused organizations and committees and is a graduate of Emerge Massachusetts, the Initiative for Diversity in Civic Leadership, and the Massachusetts Commonwealth Seminar, three organizations dedicated to training underrepresented groups to influence public policy and to run for office. She has a Master of City Planning degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a BA in Economics and Art from The University of Iowa, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. She currently serves as a member at large for the American Planning Association Arizona Southern Section and is a member of the executive team for the Asian American and Political Islander Caucus for the Arizona Democratic Party.
Before moving to Tucson in the summer of 2020, she lived in the Boston area for twelve years. During her years in Melrose, Massachusetts, she served as a Human Rights Commissioner and subsequently as a City Councilor. When elected to the Melrose City Council, she became the first person of color ever to serve in elected office in Melrose. She grew up in Iowa and identifies as Desi/Indian-American. She, her husband, and her son felt welcomed and right at home in Tucson when they moved here – even in spite of a pandemic and searing summer heat.

Arnie Saiki

research, writer, program director

Broadly focusing on regional economic and geopolitical themes in the Asia and Pacific regions, Arnie Saiki is currently leading a working group on data, statistics and valuation in the Pacific. His book “Economic and Ecological Accounting: Towards Intemerate Values,” was published last year by the Pacific Conference of Churches, the Pacific Theological College and the University of the South Pacific.

Since the publication, this campaign has been introduced to the Ecological and Economic Justice program at the World Council of Churches and he is participating in a G8 Interfaith forum for the inclusion of Wellbeing indicators into our economic accounts.

While national statistics and ecological accounting normally fall under the purview of government, academic or international institutions, Arnie has been campaigning in democratizing our ecological data, seeking support for a proof-of-concept accounting program that would enable poor, impacted, and indigenous peoples to actively participate in how we account for our socio and economic biodiversity. Intemerate Accounting is an equation that helps to correct accounting disparities that have, to a large extent, excluded the Global South. Revising our accounting system can provide access and opportunities that cross wide campaign sectors, bringing hope, action and efficacy to reverse climate change, restore our ecological biodiversity, and redistribute global wealth more equitably.

Arnie has been actively promoting and working on global justice campaigns since 2007 when he received a “We the People” grant from the Hawai’i Council of the Humanities for his work on Hawai’i Statehood. He has organized conferences with Hawaiian national independence groups, managed the Save Rapanui campaign after the Chilean military forced a lockdown of Easter Islanders. Arnie spoke at the World Bank representing the Pacific Island Forum, and participated in discussions around regionalism in the Pacific. He was recently appointed the US-Pacific Diplomacy and Solidarity Mission for the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), and is on the management team of the Deep Seabed Mining Campaign.

In 2011, Arnie received the blessing from Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell to organize a counter-conference in Honolulu while APEC was there and coordinated the Moana Nui conferences, an international partnership between the International Forum on Globalization and Pua Mohala I Ka Po. For the last ten years he has been campaigning on issues around trade, development, ecological resources, indigenous issues and militarization in the Pacific.

His essays, “TPP at the End of the Line: a briefing on economic cooperation and capacity building” was published in American Quarterly by John Hopkins University Press, and “Manifesting the Liquid Continent,” was published by Yunnan National University, as part of the 1st International conference on Asia and Pacific Ethnology and Anthropology.