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.