Cultural Identity and Mental Health
2024.08.21
Hello, this is Tatsuya Arakawa, a licensed mental health therapist (LMFT).
Thank you so much for reading my blog. I would love to provide accurate information about mental health here.
In this blog, I would like to talk about cultural identity and how it can affect mental health issues.
First, what is cultural identity?
I would like to define cultural identity here as one’s own identity related to their culture. Culture can form beliefs, behaviors, thought patterns, feelings, and so on and so forth. Therefore, culture can be a very important part of anyone’s life. However, if you do not feel your cultural identity is solid enough and/or not balanced well, and/or not aligned with how you believe you are perceived as, it can be problematic.
For instance, if you believe you are, say, Korean, and you live in Korea, participate in Korean cultural events, or have many Korean friends…etc, then most likely you feel that you can say yourself you are Korean; also, most likely, people around you would consider you as Korean.
However, even though you are born and raised in Japanese household, you do not live in Japan and/or you do not engage with Japanese cultural events, and/or you do not have many Japanese friends, you might have difficulty considering yourself as Japanese or you would like to strongly believe that you are Japanese, yet it is likely that it would not align with how others may perceive you; they may perceive you as something else other than Japanese, which can be disturbing for some and can influence how you perceive yourself from cultural identity point of view.
How you consider yourself regarding your ethnicity does not align with your behaviors, thought patterns, language you use…etc, that is when you might have unbalanced cultural identity. When you struggle with your own cultural identity, that can be detrimental to mental health.
For instance, if you struggle between two cultures or more, and you feel that you do not belong to any of them, you may feel that you are not GOOD ENOUGH. Feeling of inadequacy can lead to depression. Also, if you feel that you are not, say, Chinese enough because you do not speak Chinese, you do not behave like Chinese etc…, you might struggle with anxieties such as “am I accepted as Chinese?”
I hope this helps you better understand mental health and cultural identity. I would like to continue to talk about this matter.
Tatsuya Arakawa, LMFT