Interview with Pratya Poosala
Pratya Poosala, Jing Jing Wang
Pratya Poosala, Jing Jing Wang
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Jing Jing: Do you want to introduce yourself – name, age, pronouns, things like that?
Pratya: Yeah so my name is Pratya and currently I am a freshman at Pitzer college and my pronouns are she/her/hers. JJ: Can you talk a bit about what mental health means to you? P: Yeah so I think the most visible example of mental health for me comes down to my brother. So a couple months ago, he was actually diagnosed with psychosis, so for the past few years we’ve had to move him between mental health facilities, even states sometimes, and just beyond that, even in my own life, I’ve seen how it affects so many of my friends with their problems. It’s just that there’s so much stigma surrounding the topic that it becomes really hard |
Artwork by: Srin Lahiri
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[cont.] for people to speak out. Especially in a lot of Asian families, children are expected to do well but they can’t really speak out and seek help for their mental health or feel uncomfortable asking for it. So yeah it’s a very personal issue for me and something I’m definitely interested in helping to end the stigma around.
JJ: Have you done work around mental health in the past?
P: Yeah so I work with a website called 7 Cups of Tea, and essentially it’s a service that connects you with listeners and the you can talk about any issue you want. My role is essentially to listen to other people’s problems, and not give advice but just like help them work through it. I think it’s very rewarding, like when I’m actually going though things, I’ll just have someone talk so I can listen, and it's just like nice to know that you’re doing something good for someone else.
JJ: That’s really cool! If you’re comfortable, can you speak about both your brother’s experiences with psychosis and seeing your friends struggle with mental health?
P: For my brother’s psychosis, we had a pretty close sibling relationship until about middle school when some of his symptoms started coming out and I think like my parents and I were in denial for a bit – like I was always looking for reasons like he does not have psychosis and anxiety. It’s just because the school system’s really sh*tty and maybe like maybe they’re just not helping him with the pressure that’s being placed on him. I feel like it took a lot of time for me to stop blaming myself for some of the stuff that he was going through. I thought like maybe if I had spent more time with him, things would have been things would have gotten better, things wouldn’t have turned out this way. Every time we left him in another hospital, I would have to catch myself from thinking this way.
Advocating for mental health care isn’t just like “oh we need to end the stigma,” it’s also like applying that to your own life. I think the hardest part of it is when it affects someone in your own life. In terms of friendships, I think that I know a lot of friends have struggled with thoughts of like self-harm and things like that because I live in the Bay Area, where mental health care isn’t exactly the most… the greatest priority in a lot of people’s lives. And, I think like I’ve tried to do my best by just being there for them and trying to support them through that.
JJ: How do you navigate having a family member who is sometimes held in mental institutions?
P: I think the most important thing is to just be forgiving with one another and just extend the passion that you give others to yourself too. I think that originally, my parents found it a bit difficult adjunct to everything my brother was going through, especially because it’s not really… It’s not really talked about in Asian families, so they weren’t very comfortable with bringing it up to other members of our family. But I think later they were more willing to open up more and find resources and even connect with other families that are going through similar things, so I feel like overall just connecting with others is really important.
JJ: Umm can you talk a bit more about the intersection of mental health in Asian American communities… and in particular if you could restate the question that would be helpful!
P: So in terms of the intersection between mental health and Asian communities umm like I was saying in the Bay Area, we have a lot of Asian families here, and a lot of the times, it’s very easy to get caught up in the frenzie of schoolwork and work life and things like that. That makes people end up neglecting their own mental health and the mental health of others and I think for a lot of Asian, it’s sort of difficult. It’s sort of difficult to be on a specific, to say your own problems and be open with others. There’s this sort of model minority scenario with being perfect, about being grateful for what you have and that ends up pushing a lot of your emotions under the surface. Yeah.
JJ: Mood!!! Can you talk a bit about how your brother’s diagnosis affected you beyond just blaming yourself? What is life like in that context? What is it like not being able to be with your family?
P: Ummm it is, frankly put, it very very difficult. So he has been in Idaho since the span of like March, the beginning of quarantine. Personally, I was hoping I could use quarantine as a chance to make up for not being with him the past few years. So yeah that part very hard. We did visit him pretty recently, so that was nice, but it is very hard to reconnect with someone. I know a lot of his therapists say that he finds it hard to connect with me again, because a lot of our happy moments were associated with the time before his diagnosis. So I feel like there are days where there are like little moments of connection, where we have like video calls and I’m like “woah this is great!” but the moment you hang up and go back to doing your own things, it’s just that thought just keeps coming forward.
JJ: That thought being…?
P: The whole idea of being guilty about it and missing his presence in general.
JJ: Have you done work around mental health in the past?
P: Yeah so I work with a website called 7 Cups of Tea, and essentially it’s a service that connects you with listeners and the you can talk about any issue you want. My role is essentially to listen to other people’s problems, and not give advice but just like help them work through it. I think it’s very rewarding, like when I’m actually going though things, I’ll just have someone talk so I can listen, and it's just like nice to know that you’re doing something good for someone else.
JJ: That’s really cool! If you’re comfortable, can you speak about both your brother’s experiences with psychosis and seeing your friends struggle with mental health?
P: For my brother’s psychosis, we had a pretty close sibling relationship until about middle school when some of his symptoms started coming out and I think like my parents and I were in denial for a bit – like I was always looking for reasons like he does not have psychosis and anxiety. It’s just because the school system’s really sh*tty and maybe like maybe they’re just not helping him with the pressure that’s being placed on him. I feel like it took a lot of time for me to stop blaming myself for some of the stuff that he was going through. I thought like maybe if I had spent more time with him, things would have been things would have gotten better, things wouldn’t have turned out this way. Every time we left him in another hospital, I would have to catch myself from thinking this way.
Advocating for mental health care isn’t just like “oh we need to end the stigma,” it’s also like applying that to your own life. I think the hardest part of it is when it affects someone in your own life. In terms of friendships, I think that I know a lot of friends have struggled with thoughts of like self-harm and things like that because I live in the Bay Area, where mental health care isn’t exactly the most… the greatest priority in a lot of people’s lives. And, I think like I’ve tried to do my best by just being there for them and trying to support them through that.
JJ: How do you navigate having a family member who is sometimes held in mental institutions?
P: I think the most important thing is to just be forgiving with one another and just extend the passion that you give others to yourself too. I think that originally, my parents found it a bit difficult adjunct to everything my brother was going through, especially because it’s not really… It’s not really talked about in Asian families, so they weren’t very comfortable with bringing it up to other members of our family. But I think later they were more willing to open up more and find resources and even connect with other families that are going through similar things, so I feel like overall just connecting with others is really important.
JJ: Umm can you talk a bit more about the intersection of mental health in Asian American communities… and in particular if you could restate the question that would be helpful!
P: So in terms of the intersection between mental health and Asian communities umm like I was saying in the Bay Area, we have a lot of Asian families here, and a lot of the times, it’s very easy to get caught up in the frenzie of schoolwork and work life and things like that. That makes people end up neglecting their own mental health and the mental health of others and I think for a lot of Asian, it’s sort of difficult. It’s sort of difficult to be on a specific, to say your own problems and be open with others. There’s this sort of model minority scenario with being perfect, about being grateful for what you have and that ends up pushing a lot of your emotions under the surface. Yeah.
JJ: Mood!!! Can you talk a bit about how your brother’s diagnosis affected you beyond just blaming yourself? What is life like in that context? What is it like not being able to be with your family?
P: Ummm it is, frankly put, it very very difficult. So he has been in Idaho since the span of like March, the beginning of quarantine. Personally, I was hoping I could use quarantine as a chance to make up for not being with him the past few years. So yeah that part very hard. We did visit him pretty recently, so that was nice, but it is very hard to reconnect with someone. I know a lot of his therapists say that he finds it hard to connect with me again, because a lot of our happy moments were associated with the time before his diagnosis. So I feel like there are days where there are like little moments of connection, where we have like video calls and I’m like “woah this is great!” but the moment you hang up and go back to doing your own things, it’s just that thought just keeps coming forward.
JJ: That thought being…?
P: The whole idea of being guilty about it and missing his presence in general.
We would like to thank Pratya Poosala for taking her time to talk to us and for being so vulnerable with us.