Reflections: Men's Mental Health

Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Suraj Kandukuri and Sachit Grover to discuss Men’s Mental Health; especially understanding how being South Asian can affect the pressures we face and the status of our mental health. What surprised me most about this conversation was the similarities we shared with talking about our identities, our status as immigrants or as part of immigrant families, and the pressures of a society that expects a lot from you. We didn’t arrive at any ground breaking solutions or ways to address societal pressures or challenges. However, this conversation did provide me comfort that we all experience these struggles and sharing stories of our struggles can have a powerful impact.

During our conversation, we identified several sources of mental health stress and pressure including the traditional gender roles imposed on us by our culture and by our families. While we may not use the terms “toxic masculinity” to describe this phenomenon, how we are socialized into a specific role that we must perform does affect us in overt and covert ways. It is important that we discuss these terms and understand how they can impact our daily lives.

The episode allowed us to explore past gender specific mental health pressures to understand how South Asians growing up in a predominantly white space navigate embracing their South Asian cultures and adapting to their American one. I think many people can relate to this experience of compartmentalizing each identity to your home and school respectively.  As we enter the adult world, we struggle with understanding how to coexist with both of these identities. I was so excited to hear how Suraj and Sachit managed this difficult process and I am excited to implement some of their ideas in my own life.

This episode just scratched the surface on understanding mental health and how it is affected by our lives, choices, societal and community pressures. There are so many more conversations we need to have. I hope you will join us in having these conversations and destigmatizing mental health. 

by Kartik Ramkumar