Two Topics, One Conversation: Holding Space for AANHPI Heritage and Mental Health Awareness

May has a way of asking us to hold two things at once.

Every year, May is designated both Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month. At first glance, they can feel like two separate conversations happening side by side — one about culture and history, one about wellbeing. But for a lot of people, especially those in the AANHPI community, those conversations have never been separate at all.

At Dachtler Therapy, I think May is an invitation. Not to collapse two important observances into one, but to notice where they naturally meet, and to sit with what that intersection asks of us.

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Honoring What Each Carries

Before we talk about the crossover, it's worth being clear: each observance has its own purpose, and both deserve to be held fully.

AANHPI Heritage Month is a time to recognize, celebrate, and bear witness to the rich, diverse histories and contributions of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities. Diverse is the right word. The AANHPI community encompasses more than 50 ethnicities, over 100 languages and dialects, and a vast range of lived experiences, immigration statuses, religions, and cultural identities. This month is not about flattening that complexity. It's about honoring it. It's a time to amplify AANHPI voices, acknowledge the resilience and creativity that has shaped this country, and reckon honestly with the ways these communities have also been marginalized, targeted, and erased.

Mental Health Awareness Month exists for a different, though related, reason: to reduce stigma, to open the conversation about mental health struggles that too often happen in silence, and to remind people that getting support is not a sign of weakness. It is, in fact, one of the bravest things a person can do.

Neither of these purposes disappears when we talk about the other. Holding them together doesn't dilute them. It deepens them.

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Where the Conversations Cross

For many people in the AANHPI community, mental health has long been a taboo subject, something spoken of in hushed tones, if at all. Stigma around seeking help, cultural expectations of stoicism and self-sufficiency, and the pressure to appear resilient for the sake of family or community are not abstract forces, but are real, and they shape whether someone reaches out for support or quietly carries their pain alone.

"Mental health is not an individual concern for us. It's shaped by family dynamics, heritage, power structures, and the overall immigrant experience." — Anise Health

The truth is, mental health doesn't exist outside of culture. It lives inside it. The way someone understands their own emotional experience is filtered through the stories they were raised with, the community they belong to, and the larger systems they navigate every day. For AANHPI individuals, those filters often include the weight of intergenerational trauma, experiences of racism and xenophobia, navigating dual or multiple cultural identities, and what it costs (emotionally, relationally, spiritually) to exist between worlds.

This is why culturally responsive therapy matters so deeply. A therapist who doesn't understand that context isn't simply missing information. They may inadvertently cause harm.

May 10 is AANHPI Mental Health Day — a day designated within both AANHPI Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month to specifically raise awareness of the mental health concerns that are unique to AANHPI communities. The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus recognized this day as an important reminder that destigmatizing and improving access to mental health care is ongoing, necessary work.

The 2026 theme for AANHPI Heritage Month is Power in Unity: Strengthening Communities Together, a theme that speaks to healing just as much as it speaks to heritage.

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A Note for Adoptees: You Belong in This Conversation

If you are a Transnational, Transracial, or Transnational Transracial Adoptee (particularly one with AANHPI heritage), you may find yourself navigating both of these months with a particular kind of complexity that isn't always easy to name.

AANHPI Heritage Month can feel affirming and alienating at the same time. It can stir up questions about what it means to claim a heritage you may not have been raised in. It can surface grief for a culture, language, or community that wasn't passed down to you. It can bring up the complicated feelings of being perceived as part of a community while also feeling like an outsider to it — and of being raised in a family, culture, or country that doesn't fully reflect your face.

Mental Health Awareness Month, too, can land differently for adoptees. The invitation to "talk about it" doesn't always account for the fact that the experience of adoption itself is rarely talked about with nuance; the losses, the ambiguities, the loyalty binds, the search for identity and belonging that doesn't fit neatly into either the family you were raised in or the culture you came from.

I want to say this clearly: your experience is not too complicated for therapy. It is exactly the kind of experience that therapy — done well, done humbly — is built for.

You don't have to choose between your identities to be worthy of support. All of you gets to show up here.

As an international, transracial adoptee myself, I carry this personally. I know what it is to sit in the space between cultures, between the life you were given and the one you're building, between the identities others assign to you and the ones you're still figuring out for yourself. That lived experience is not separate from my clinical work. It informs it, every day.

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You Already Carry Everything You Need

May holds a lot. It celebrates. It honors. It asks hard questions. It makes space for grief and pride and everything in between. For AANHPI individuals, for Adoptees, for anyone who has ever felt like their mental health story didn't quite fit the mold — this month is yours, too.

Healing isn't linear, and it isn't one-size-fits-all. It looks like you. It moves at your pace. It honors your history while making room for who you are becoming.

If you've been thinking about reaching out — to make sense of something, to finally put words to what you've been carrying, to find a therapist who understands the specific terrain you're navigating — this is as good a month as any to take that first step.

Whenever you're ready, I'm here. Rooted in healing, growing together.