Telling the untold stories: Disrupting racism in children’s mental health resources through the narratives of East Asian parents

Abstract

Background: Evidence suggests that anti-Asian racism has a distinct impact on the mental health of East Asian children. There is a pressing need to develop child mental health resources for East Asian parents within the Canadian context. While health equity and anti-racism scholars across the globe have advanced our understanding of anti-Asian racism, exploring experiences of East Asian parents in Canada and their perspectives of anti-Asian racism and anti-racism strategies within the field of knowledge translation (KT) remains limited. Telling the untold stories of East Asian parents may help forge an anti-racist mental health future and act as a site of resistance for East Asian diasporas in Canada. Purpose: The present dissertation simultaneously deconstructs racism while working towards reconstruction through anti-racism strategies as a way to promote racial justice for East Asian diasporas in child health research. The objectives of my multi-phase dissertation are to: a) engage nursing and healthcare theoretical foundations toward a moral commitment in anti- racism, b) document the impact of racism and the mental health of East Asian diasporas, and c) develop anti-racism strategies for child mental health knowledge translation resources specific for East Asian parents. Methods: This multi-phase dissertation was conducted using three studies. The multi-phase studies included: a) a theoretical exploration to examine the extent to which nursing’s theoretical foundation (in)advertently advances racism, b) a scoping review to systematically synthesize existing literature on racism and the mental health of East Asian populations, and c) a narrative inquiry study to collect East Asian parents’ counter-narratives and perspectives of racism and anti-racism strategies in mental health. Findings: The theoretical exploration found the importance for future nursing and healthcare scholarship to avoid using existing theoretical underpinnings that lack a focus on racism as the foundation for developing anti-racism solutions. The scoping review identified several gaps in the literature, including the limited articles within the Canadian context, within the children population, utilizing a qualitative approach, targeting mental healthcare resources and services, and addressing anti-racism solutions. The narrative inquiry study found that the concept of otherness across time and space was a significant component to East Asian parents’ stories of racism. East Asian parents were labelled as a ‘perpetual foreigner,’ a label that was unconsciously accepted within society, in addition to having their reality linked to a set of conditional principles governed by the system of white supremacy. It was recommended that anti-racism solutions need to address power imbalances and how child mental health KT resources are developed. The findings highlighted that despite good intentions, a researcher without lived experiences may lack the capacity to fully understand East Asian situations, and therefore, underscoring notions of epistemic racism and silencing of East Asian voices. Conclusion: This dissertation fostered a space of empowerment for East Asian people to reclaim their narratives as a strategy to promote racial justice within the child mental healthcare system. Intentionally creating a space to amplify these systemically oppressed narratives actively challenges dominant conditions sustaining anti-Asian racism and its impacts on mental health. This dissertation provided as another gateway into the collective healing and liberation of East Asian people against centuries of anti-Asian racism in Canada.