Family Mental Health & Culture: Embracing Intersectionality
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Families made up of people from different cultures may face barriers to communication, understanding, and support. These families can experience conflict when members are unable to fully practice or express their cultures, and a lack of knowledge or education may lead families to face stigma and marginalization. Understanding how to embrace cultural differences and create an equitable environment for all family members may lessen the gap between differences and strengthen bonds. Family members may benefit from working with a therapist to enhance communication and conflict-resolution skills.
The connection between mental health and culture
Culture can include religion, food, what one wears and how one wears it, language, marriage, music, and racial or ethnic background. Culture can also be influenced by how someone grows up, their identity, and the traditions in which they participate due to societal expectations or rituals.
In families, members may have different cultures when an interracial adoption occurs, parents practice different religions, individuals speak different languages, or when the family includes people from different countries or walks of life.
Culture can be important to mental health because it typically influences how people discuss mental health topics, seek professional help, and cope with symptoms. People who practice certain religions or belong to specific spiritual groups may struggle to see mental health as being treatable with clinical care. Those who grew up in a country that did not value mental health or saw it in a different way than it is viewed in the United States may struggle to seek help or label their symptoms. In addition, some people may avoid seeking Western medicine because they grew up with holistic and Eastern care. Family members who disapprove of these methods or make unkind comments may discourage others from seeking help.
Practicing one’s religion or cultural traditions can improve mental health, allowing them to embrace their individuality. However, when family members have different cultural beliefs or try to restrict a person’s cultural exploration, conflict can arise and may contribute to chronic stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms.
What is a multicultural family?
A multicultural family typically comprises people with different cultural backgrounds, often in race, ethnicity, or religion. For example, one partner in a couple may practice Christianity, while the other practices Judaism, or a married couple may be made up of individuals of different ethnicities. Misunderstandings can arise if a person is not educated on or familiar with cultural identities other than their own.
Children in a multicultural family may also be affected by cultural and social factors, as they may be influenced by multiple cultures, especially if their parents are immigrants who speak a different language. Approximately 56% of children of immigrants are bilingual. Children who come from a multicultural family may develop a more complex understanding of both of their parents’ cultures if they are raised in an environment where it is safe for all family members to practice their beliefs and traditions.
What is intersectionality in mental health?
The term intersectionality generally means accepting that various parts of one’s identity can uniquely interact with life experiences in ways that may require an equitable approach to understanding and community. For example, a person’s gender, race, class, religion, sexuality, chronic physical illness, ethnicity, language, and other identity factors can impact how they move in the world and how others perceive and treat them. Marginalized groups often have a higher risk of mental health conditions and suicide.
Risk of racism for people with certain gender identities
In the context of mental health, people with certain identities may be more likely to face racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of oppression. Oppression can contribute to mental illness and emotional symptoms in some people.
In a family group, a person from one culture may perceive that their family members do not understand their culture or do not give them the space to be authentic. In these cases, anxiety, shame, depression, and other mental health concerns can arise.
Honoring intersectionality in the family
Honoring intersectionality to positively influence mental health in a family can look like the following:
- Being open to learning more about someone’s identity and traditions, even if you do not fully understand them
- Asking how you can be more accepting of cultural influences
- Taking the initiative to learn more about the person’s culture
- Setting boundaries around your own identities
- Communicating about how your experiences may differ from another family member’s and what that means to you
- Setting boundaries around your religious, spiritual, and cultural practices
- Including your family in cultural practices
- Practicing self-care when facing oppression or stigma
- Finding a community, such as a support group or cultural center, like an immigration support group or African heritage cultural group
Adoption, culture, and mental health
In some cases, multicultural families involve parents or caregivers who adopt a child from a different country or race.
Multicultural families who have adopted a child from another culture may benefit from educating themselves on the child’s country or culture of origin and the potential racial barriers they may face. It can be helpful for them to give their child space to practice cultural traditions and learn about their significance. It may also be beneficial to have them join clubs or groups that honor their heritage and allow them to meet others with similar backgrounds.
How to promote healthy dynamics in a multicultural family
Consider the following tips when building a healthy family dynamic that incorporates equity and inclusion.
Encourage cultural immersion
Parents of multicultural children may encourage their children to practice traditions from their heritage and participate in cultural events, such as Juneteenth for Black individuals or the Chinese New Year for those from China. In addition, cultural immersion can look like family participation in religious or spiritual traditions. For example, if one partner is Jewish and the other is not, the secular partner may still choose to honor their partner’s religion by participating in traditions or supporting the individual’s religious needs. Multicultural couples of different languages and ethnicities may attempt to learn each other’s languages and share cultural traditions from their countries.
Avoid stigmatizing statements and embrace intersectionality
Try to avoid disrespecting someone else’s culture by telling them you don’t see the differences or that they shouldn’t practice certain traditions at home. Be open to conversations about stigma and misconceptions, and consider reading books aimed at learning about topics like white privilege, immigration rights, religious differences, and intersectionality. Becoming educated about someone else’s culture may help you understand them on a deeper level and may reduce stigmatizing statements that often come from a lack of understanding.
Support shared goals and values
In a multicultural family, it may be important to find common values and goals that will bring the family together. Try to identify a common ground where you can bond such as your aspirations and dreams as a family. Another example is shared objectives or interests. You can take this as an opportunity to bridge cultural differences and make your family more harmonious.
Promote empathy and understanding
Acknowledge that everyone is human and that a family member could be hurt after being discriminated against for cultural beliefs. Try to understand them and validate each other’s feelings.
Educate family members regarding the impact of racism on family relationships
Racism in a multicultural family can never foster a healthy environment. It often becomes a source of tension and conflict in the home. Hence, it may be important to educate everyone about its harmful impact. Have open conversations with family members. Make time to learn each other’s cultural background and beliefs, and encourage everyone to build empathy for someone else’s culture.
Consider therapy
Therapy can be a resource for families struggling with miscommunication, stigma, mental health concerns, physical symptoms, or conflict based on their multicultural identities. A therapist can act as a neutral third party to offer support and evidence-based communication techniques.
When seeking mental health treatment, individuals can learn more about their cultures and express their needs to a mental health professional. However, some people may struggle to access in-person therapy due to barriers like finances or distance from providers. In these cases, online therapy through a platform like BetterHelp may be more accessible for those interested in attending therapy on their own or with their partner.
Choose your therapist’s gender
Individuals can sign up by completing a quick questionnaire, which allows them to state their preferences regarding their therapist’s gender, as well as whether they prefer an LGBTQIA+ or BIPOC therapist. This may enable them to connect with a therapist from their culture or identity group.
Studies about online therapy
Studies show that online therapy can be effective. Some individuals may experience symptoms of anxiety and depression related to family conflicts, as well as trauma associated with topics like adoption or abuse. In these cases, some studies suggest that online therapy may be more effective for treating symptoms than in-person therapy.
Takeaway
What is intersectionality in simple words?
In simple words, the term intersectionality refers to the ways multiple forms of oppression can affect the same person based on different dimensions of their identity.
It might also be helpful to think about critical race theory when looking to define intersectionality as these approaches are similar in their scope.
Which is an example of intersectionality?
An example of intersectionality may include how a Black lesbian woman is treated in society on an everyday basis. Because of the layers of the person’s identity, she may face multiple types of prejudice, discrimination, and stereotypes. This could include gender discrimination, racial prejudice, and homophobia, for example.
Another example is Dalit women in India who face both gender and caste discrimination.
What is intersectionality in feminism?
The feminist movement has largely focused on gender-based issues in the past, but this is changing. Feminist theory is now embracing intersectionality and the different ways a woman may experience discrimination based on her sexual orientation, class, and racial identity, for example.
What are the six core ideas of intersectionality?
Columbia Law School legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality. It consists of six core ideas:
- Social inequality
- Intersecting power relations
- Social context
- Relationality
- Social justice
- Complexity
This concept has helped shape legal discussions about policy and anti-discrimination laws in the U.S. Crenshaw describes the intersectional lens as one you can look through and see where power and equality strands become tangled, resulting in interlocking oppressions. She argued that historically, feminism has focused on white women, and racial justice has focused on Black men, excluding Black women and other women of various ethnicities from the discussion.
What best describes intersectionality?
There might be many effective ways to describe intersectionality. One way to describe it is the crosspaths of gender, socioeconomic, racial and cultural hierarchies where a person is impacted by several types of oppression at once.
A prime example of intersectionality in action is the UK’s Equality Act of 2010, which allows claims to be made in legal cases that draw from multiple types of discrimination and protected characteristics. Many people in the U.S. argue that the country should have a similar anti-discrimination doctrine.
What is another word for intersectionality?
Another word for intersectionality is “interconnectedness”. It describes how different sub-types of prejudice can affect the same person. For example, a middle-class Black woman may face different challenges than a middle-class white woman. In this respect, there is no such thing as a “single-issue” prejudice.
How do you identify your intersectionality?
To effectively identify your intersectionality, it could be helpful to think about all of the different aspects of your identity. This could include your gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, racial and ethnic identities, and whether you have a disability, for example. Reflect on these intersecting identities and how they might impact your experience in society, for better or for worse. You might reflect on both the individual and combined effects of oppression like racial discrimination and sex discrimination, for example.
Which statement best explains the concept of intersectionality?
The Merriam Webster dictionary defines intersectionality as “the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.”
Another famous statement that explains the controversy over intersectionality was made by conservative pundit Ben Shapiro. Shapiro said, “I would define intersectionality as, at least the way that I’ve seen it manifest on college campuses, and in a lot of the political left, as a hierarchy of victimhood in which people are considered members of a victim class by virtue of membership in a particular group, and at the intersection of various groups lies the ascent on the hierarchy.”
In response, Crenshaw argued that there have been individuals from the beginning of the Civil Rights Act who”denounced the creation of equality rights on the grounds that it takes something away from them.”
Due to identity politics, national conversations about intersectionality and social and racial justice in the United States have become heated.
What is the statement of intersectionality?
In the 1989 issue of the University of Chicago Legal Forum, Kimberle Crenshaw made the first statement about intersectionality. In the abstract to her article “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics”, she writes “One of the very few Black women's studies books is entitled All the Women Are White; All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us are Brave. I have chosen this title as a point of departure in my efforts to develop a Black feminist criticism because it sets forth a problematic consequence of the tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis. In this talk, I want to examine how this tendency is perpetuated by a single-axis framework that is dominant in antidiscrimination law and that is also reflected in feminist theory and antiracist politics.
What are the benefits of intersectionality?
There could be many benefits to learning more about intersectionality and acknowledging its impact on society. Intersectional thinking can help us better understand how marginalised groups experience discrimination on an individual level. For example, a black woman who is also a disabled woman might experience the world differently than someone who identifies with just one of these characteristics. This is an example of how someone can be a member of multiple subordinate groups and social identities (i.e., disabled women, African American women). In order for their circumstances to be adequately understood, it’s necessary to look at all factors.
Understanding the nuances of intersectionality can help us develop practical applications in aspects of society such as education, health care, and the workforce, for example. Addressing issues in these sectors can lead to a more equitable world for everyone.
According to a statement by the African American Policy Forum and Intersectionality, exclusion in our society is often based on structural inequality as opposed to individual bias. The intersectional approach allows us to examine the interconnected nature of social classifications and how these multiple dimensions of oppression can impact a particular group or individual.
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