APF Launches New Report about AANHPI Mental Health in the SF Bay Area

Somewhere in our community right now, someone’s family member is struggling. Maybe their grandfather is newly arrived and uncertain of how welcome he truly is here. Maybe their cousin has been here for decades but never found a community that understood them. Maybe their mother is caring for a parent, a spouse, and grandchildren all at once, and hasn’t slept well in years.

They probably won’t call a therapist. In our communities, most people don’t — only about 1 in 4 Asian Americans with a mental health need ever receive professional care. But they might open up to the woman who runs the weekly senior lunch. Or the young volunteer at church who speaks their dialect. Or the nephew who helps them navigate their medical appointments.

These are the people our communities turn to first. And increasingly, Bay Area nonprofits are recognizing, training, and supporting them as a formal part of how our community heals.

What the research shows

Over the past year, Asian Pacific Fund partnered with the California Health Care Foundation and the Healthforce Center at UCSF to study how 15 AANHPI-serving organizations across the Bay Area are using these trusted community members — also known as paraprofessionals — to provide culturally responsive behavioral health care.

The full report is here, and we hope you’ll read it:

📌 Read: Expanding Behavioral Health Models to Support AANHPI Communities
📌 Read: Executive Summary

How our affiliates support our mental health

When the person supporting you shares your language and your life experience, the shift is dramatic. People who would never walk into a therapist’s office will sit at a shared meal and start to talk. People who’ve carried their grief alone for decades find community again. People who’ve spent their lives taking care of others begin to let themselves be taken care of.

The researchers put it clinically — reduced isolation, improved sleep, decreased anxiety, increased engagement with therapy. The organizations doing the work say it more simply: people come in with no idea of what they might need, and learn, with support, not only to name their distress, but how to find help for it.

Where you come in

This work is possible because people like you have chosen to invest in our community. It can only deepen when more of us recognize that our community’s own wisdom is worth funding. If this has sparked something for you, we’d love to talk: to share more of what we’re seeing and learn what matters most to you.

With gratitude for your partnership.