Jeremy Lin: On "The Silicon Valley Suicides"

Atlantic graphic

RECENTLY, Jeremy Lin got a lot of attention because of his changing hairstyles even getting mentioned in a nationally published magazine.

When the NBA player posted on his Facebook page his thoughts on suicide, not so much. 

Reading "The Silicon Valley Suicides," in this month's Atlantic magazine caused Lin to reflect on his own high school years, darkened by the suicide of two his classmates, the pressures he placed on himself and the pressures he felt coming from others' expectations of him.

"The pressure to succeed in high school is all too familiar to me. I distinctly remember being a freshman in high school, overwhelmed by the belief that my GPA (grade point average) over the next four years would make or break my life. My daily thought process was that every homework assignment, every project, every test could be the difference," he writes on his Facebook page.

The Atlantic article written by Hanna Rosin focused on a couple of suicide clusters that occurred in Palo Alto, smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley, the cradle of 21st century innovation.

"Since I went to Stanford, in the early ’90s, the surrounding public schools have been utterly transformed by the tech explosion," wrote Rosin. "Gunn, and to a lesser extent Palo Alto High School, is legendary all over the world. Steve Jobs’s old house is in the neighborhood. Chinese patriarchs buy homes in the community and send their families, so their kids can go to school there. Parents sacrifice vacations and plan their budgets carefully so they can afford a house in the district."

Not all the kids who committed suicide in Palo Alto, where Jeremy Lin went to school, were Asian/American, but there was no denying that some Asian/American students were under some - sometimes unsaid - pressure to succeed academically. Rosin wrote:

Tragedies do not always bring people together; sometimes they just deepen the rifts between them. The day after Byron Zhu died, a Paly senior named Andrew Lu posted on his blog a diagram of three circles, labeled “Palo Alto,” “Male,” and “Asian.” “It seems that the demographic most at risk are Asian (Chinese) males in high school (hey, that’s what I am!),” he wrote. Three of the boys who had died in the past academic year had at least some Asian heritage. 

Andrew was broaching a very touchy subject, one that had come up more rudely in comments on Palo Alto Online. Heavy stress among “good kids” was the product of “a nasty competitive atmosphere contrived by unethical Tiger Mothers,” one commenter wrote. At the end of some of my conversations, a student, teacher, or counselor would look around to make sure no one was listening and then whisper a story about an Asian kid being punished or even kicked out of the house for a night after getting a B or failing to get into Stanford. I’d heard how new East Asian immigrant parents mistakenly transposed the reality of education in, say, China or Korea, which is that how you do on a single test can determine your entire future. Gunn is more than 40 percent Asian, and some non-Asian parents, particularly ones who’d grown up in town when the Asian population was smaller, felt the shift was poisoning the culture of the entire school.

The Atlantic article raises questions about a value that is part of the Model Minority trope and should make us stop and ponder the possible unintentional ramifications of those values. It should be noted that the vast majority of Asian/Americans grow up to be well-adjusted, healthy and successful individuals. 

Contrary to popular myth fed by the Tiger Mom archetype, Asian Americans do not have a higher suicide rate than other racial and ethnic groups. However, data in the National College Health Assessment Survey seem to indicate that Asian/American college students have suicidal thoughts and attempt suicide more frequently than their peers.

But what both the Rosin and Lin emphasize, we shouldn't  expect our young people to react in the same way, even though the environment they are in may be similar.

As we know, Lin survived high school. He found his close relationship with his Christian faith  and his parents to be his saving grace, but that might not be the solution for everyone. Lin went on to Harvard and onto a life in the NBA. In each stage of his life he had to meet everyone's expectations and defy the Asian stereotypes, which puts an awful lot on his shoulders.

Lin's Facebook entry drew lots of reaction.

"As an Asian American bicultural and bilingual psychologist I’ve had the privilege to work with so many over-pressured youth and loving but misguided parents who believe that their child’s exhaustion, anxiety, depression can be overcome by just not talking about it,” wrote Neleh Chimera. “Thank you for writing this — it will touch many young lives.”

Generally, Asian/Americans don't like to talk about mental health issues but not talking about it will make this issue go away. There is a dire need to gather more data on this subject considering the wide breadth of the 50 ethnic groups that fall under this broad Asian American category and their mental health needs vary as widely as their economic, educational and social status.

"We may not have the answers to how to completely solve these issues, but we can take more time to really listen to each other, to reach out and have compassion on one another," Lin concludes. "I don’t have any great insight and I don’t know exactly what it’s like to be a high school student today. I do know that I’m proud to be from Palo Alto, a resilient community that I see striving to learn how to better support and care for each other. I hope that my personal experience can remind someone else that they are worth so much more than their accomplishments."

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FOR ASSISTANCE

Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the United Sates and 8th among Asian Americans. 

If you are concerned that you or someone you know may be at risk for suicide, we strongly encourage you to do one or more of the following: 

• Contact a mental health provider within your community. 
• Call 1-800-273-8255 (TALK), the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, for a referral. (More than 150 languages are offered)
• Call 1-877-990-8585, Asian LifeNet Hotline (24 hours). (Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Fujianese are offered)
• In the United States, call 911.
• In addition, each state and county have their own hotlines. 

Do not leave the person alone even after phone contact with an appropriate professional has been made.

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