Lit Review #3

Citation: 

Stremming, Eileen. The First Generation: Bridging the Generational Gap of Mental Health. New Degree Press, 2019.

Summary: 

In Eileen Stremmings book, The First Generation: Bridging the Generational Gap of Mental Health, Stremming writes about several mental health journeys that she and others have gone through. The main takeaway is that first-generation students have a hard time expressing what they are going through to their family members. These students are struggling to discuss what they are going through because of the high expectations their families set for them. Also, some of the parents that Stremming mentioned in the book even mentioned how they shouldn't be feeling what they are just because they are in America and have a good life. Additionally, Stremming mentions this concept of ‘bridging the gap’ which has been helpful in forming my theoretical frame. Stremming points out that there is a gap in the way first-generation students are expressing how they are feeling to their families. This gap is something that must be resolved in order for students to live happily. 

Author: 

The author of this book is Elieen Stremming. Stremming is knowledgeable on this topic because she is a mental health advocate who focuses specifically on immigrant communities. She also does work on improving the way different generations see mental health problems. Additionally, she has experienced mental health challenges as a first-generation student. Not only did she experience it, she also got to see the way it affected her sister. Stremming is the perfect author to take information from because she studies the topic and she also has first-hand experience. 

Key Terms: 
Stigma: For mental health, it is the negative connotation around the illness. Some people may think of a mental disorder and have a negative perception around it, which makes it a stigma. 
Mental gap: The gap where individuals feel uncomfortable and like they are unable to talk to their relatives about what they have been experiencing.

Quotes: 

“Our family has always been incredibly hardworking and we have never been unappreciative of the fact that we are in the United States today. But the idea of mental illness is not quite understood and can be disregarded easily because we have had ‘bigger things to worry about’” (Stremming 338). 

“The Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) has noted, ‘While depression affects all ages and both genders, girls are more likely to develop depression during adolescence’” (Stremming 395). 

“Regarding the mental health stigma- especially in families with immigrant parents- talking about mental health problems is incredibly difficult. According to the American Psychological Association, Asian Americans often underutilize mental health services. This may be due to the rate of assimilation and adaptation to culture” (Stremming 427). 

Value:

This book is very valuable to my research. It provides me with several cases that I can put into my paper. What makes it even more valuable is that it isn't generalized statistics; it is several different real experiences that individuals have faced. Personally, I think the best way to make a case is to provide personal examples. Also, this book provides me my theoretical frame of ‘bridging the gap.’ 

Extra Credit Documentary: College Students and Mental Health: Confronting an Emerging Crisis

For this assignment, I watched College Students and Mental Health: Confronting an Emerging Crisis. This was an event presented by The Harvard School of Public Health and Huffpost. They invited several mental health experts to discuss the mental health crisis going on in America. This Q&A session will be useful for my research because it focused on mental health on college campuses. One thing in particular that will be helpful is the Active Minds Organizations that this forum pointed me too. The Active Minds organization is a national organization that supports mental health awareness on college campuses. 

The most important quote from this forum is from Michelle Williams, Dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She tells us that, “The increasing demands in some settings you know more than a third increase in demand for services. There are many of our campuses that are just unprepared to meet the demands for service and I applaud our students for reaching out for those services but we’ve not caught up and so we really have to do two things. One is to look through the public health lens and think about health promotion to find ways to engage those students who are experiencing stress but not the clinically severe forms of mental distress and mental health issues to avoid over medicalizing what some of the symptoms of stress are and allow for triaging the kinds of care like talk therapy, the other interventions that you’ve heard about available and make sure then that the higher level of support for students suffering at the higher end of the spectrum for health care needs are able to access other services in a timely way and not experience the long waiting periods that so many of us have been hearing about on some campuses” (Michelle Williams). This quote will be useful because she is telling us that universities are not meeting the demand for services, just like my other research has shown. She also noted that we need to make resources more available for students dealing with stress so then the students who are experiencing severe mental illness will be seen sooner. 

This Q&A can be watched at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H--H18dT8QQ

Extra Credit Documentary Review: (Un) Privileged:The Cost of Being Poor at an Elite Institution

For this assignment, I watched the documentary (Un) Privileged: The Cost of Being Poor at an Elite Institution. This documentary focused on low income and first-generation college students from several elite schools such as Trinity College, Vassar College, and Columbia University. These students all came together to discuss the challenges they were facing at their elite institutions. Each individual student thought they were the only ones who felt the way they were feeling until they actually talked it out with other students who were going through the same thing. Their institutions were not providing the proper resources for low income and first-generation students to succeed. Because of this, these students are feeling like they do not belong at their institutions. But, it helped them to talk to other students who were experiencing similar problems which made them know they weren’t alone. This documentary will be helpful in my research because it showed that these students not being able to fit in at their institutions is affecting their mental health and other aspects of their lives. 

There were two quotes in particular that stood out to me. First, one of the students said: “We can see the numbers of our friends and fellow classmates that are battling depression, battling anxiety, because they vocally say that ‘I don't fit in here’ or ‘ I don't feel comfortable at this school because they don't see people who look like them, they don't see programs that are geared towards them” (12:33-12:50). This quote will be beneficial for my research because it shows that students are struggling to fit in at their schools which affects their mental health. Not fitting in can severely impact someone's mental state leading them to become depressed. Additionally, another quote I found helpful was when a student stated, “I don't really know how to take care of myself mentally because there are nights here, long periods of time here, that I realize I'm not happy and I don’t really know how to integrate myself”(18:05-18:15). This quote will also be helpful in my research. Being able to take care of yourself mentally is very important, and if you are unable to do that, you will be unable to do other things in your life. Mental health is probably one of the most important things in an individual's life, and once it starts to deteriorate then other aspects of one’s life will slowly start to turn as well. 

This documentary can be watched at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZUsjhlRFnw

Blog #9: Argument and Counter-Argument

For my research, I am looking into why mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression, are at an all-time high and how they are affecting students, particularly first-generation students. I have found an ample amount of research showing that first-generation students tend to experience higher mental health problems. Recently, I found an article from the Journal of College Student Psychotherapy called “Supporting the Mental Health Needs of First-Generation College Students” by Lisa A House, Chelsea Neal, and Jason Kolb. In this article, they did research on first-generation students and looked if they really do experience more mental health problems as opposed to their first-generation peers. These researchers found that “The univariate testing found that there was no significant difference for depression, anxiety, social anxiety, eating concerns, hostility, alcohol use, and overall distress based on the first-generation status” (House, Neal, Kolb 5). I do not agree with this because all the research I have found clearly has found that first-generation students are in fact prone to higher mental health problems. I am still doing more research to see if any other others agree with this research.

Research Blog #8: Case

For my case, I am using information from the book The First Generation: Bridging the Gap of Mental Health by Eileen Renee Stremming. Stremming uses her own experience growing up as a first-generation student with mental health struggles to show her readers the difficulty she experienced. Along with her story, she also incorporates other stories from other first-generation students and the challenges they faced. Reading this book, it has proven to be a very good source that I will be incorporating into my research.

I found two examples that will be helpful in building my case. One would be when Stremming talks about her sister, Eliza. Stremming tells us that, "Eliza did not want to openly share with our family all that she had been feeling for fear of being judged or brushed off again" (Stremming 375). The second one would be when she talks about another first-generation student, Justin. She tells us that, "Our parents would talk about achievements for hours, but the mental health of their children is something that Asian parents would never boast about. In fact, it is something that you would rarely hear conversations about among immigrant parents. Justin has found it harder being both a man and the child of an immigrant because there is also a stigma attached to men discussing emotional problems” (Stremming 464). 

These cases are very helpful for my research because it shows that first-generation students struggle to get the support they need from their parents. Because of this, their mental health only gets worse because they are scared to reach out for help. 

Research Blog #7: Frame

The academic frame in my paper would be the concept of mental health and how it affects college students greatly, especially first-generation students. One of the really useful sources I have been using is the United States Congress’s research “Mental Health on College Campuses: Investments, Accommodations Needed to Address Student Needs.” This research has given me good statistics and information to help further dive into my topic. For example, in this reading, I found that “The number of nontraditional students on campus, such as veterans; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ) students; first-generation students; international students; and foster youth, has grown significantly. Members of these groups are believed to be at greater risk for mental health challenges due to stressors such as racism, prejudice, low socioeconomic status, undereducation, and acculturation” (US Congress 21). It is evidently clear that mental health is a large problem on college campuses, especially among minority and first-generation students.