心怡HARMONIOUS
We are a community-based initiative affiliated with the UMass MIND Program hoping to provide culturally appropriate mental health education and resources with the goal of decreasing stigma, encouraging help-seeking, and fostering a more supportive environment.
The stigma surrounding mental health presents a significant barrier to accessing important services for Chinese communities. This stigma is even greater for the older generation, and often this makes it almost impossible for us to talk about mental health with our families. Existing mental health campaigns rarely target Asian adults let alone non-English speaking populations. We believe that our bilingual, culturally specific, community-focused approach will let us address these gaps in existing mental health campaigns and hope to expand this model to other communities if it works well.
Our current plan is to create an online resource for people of Chinese heritage in Massachusetts to highlight local culturally appropriate services and provide a space for you to share stories, recordings, artwork, and other media about your personal mental health experiences. We will then translate and circulate these stories and resources over our WeChat and other social media platforms. We know that for some of you it can be difficult explaining experiences to your parents when you lack certain vocabulary, so our hope is that translating and amplifying your stories and lived experiences will encourage more of our community to realize that mental health is real, that help exists, and that we can talk about it instead of suffering in silence.
For more information about Harmonious, please go to: https://projectharmonious.org.
心怡Harmonious 是麻州大学中国精神卫生计划下的一个项目，重点关注在美华人精神和心理健康问题。我们的目标是提高华人社区对心理健康的重视，减少由于文化因素导致对心理疾病的偏见，普及公共心理健康知识，与有需要者分享相关的各种资源信息。
We conducted the Chinese Community Mental Health Survey over 2021-2022. This yearlong online survey was sent to various communities of Chinese heritage in Massachusetts, with an aim to more thoroughly capture the experiences of our community from a wider range of age groups, language proficiency, and acculturation. A total of 326 responses were included in this initial analysis. Our full report is available in three languages - English, simplified Chinese, and traditional Chinese - and can be viewed by clicking on the links below.