Asian Americans are more likely to commit suicide

Andrew Lam (New American Media) attempts to bring to light why Asian Americans are, according to a recent CDC report, more likely to commit suicide.  Mr. Lam also relays the recent death of three Chinese Americans at Caltech in the last three months, and moreover the disproportionately high suicide rate of students with an Asian background at Cornell University based on 10 years of data. 

Moreover, the author shares his personal encounters with friends who are so driven by so tall a calling and very well so challenged by the reality of failure (“not an option”).  He alludes to statistics that have fed the popular opinion that Asian Americans are über-achievers.  However, he acknowledges that such a notion also unfairly promotes undue expectations for the many less able or inclined to fit such a stereotype.

“What’s barely explored, sadly, is the darker narrative, that subterraneous stream that runs parallel to this shining path to academic success: stress, disappointment, depression, and, when failing to make the grade, a profound if not deadly identity crisis.”

I accept the author’s hypothesis that Confucian culture may have something to do with this, and that as a consequence of our upbringing we have “learned to measure the world and ourselves solely through a pedagogic lens”.  Even then, I mourn the loss of the three who have just lost their lives and that of the many young Asian Americans who continue to succumb to the seemingly inevitable option when they encounter defeat.  But I plead to the good in all of us to honestly appreciate and at best nurture the other facets of our children’s identity that may have escaped us in our own youth.