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Evaluation ViewAttendees 1

Oppression and Resilience Minority Health
Session Type:: Symposia

Symposium 45 - Identifying Mechanistic Intervention Targets for Asian Americans Facing Racialized Stress from Adolescence to Older Adulthood

Saturday, November 22, 2025
11:45 AM - 1:15 PM CST
Location: Foster 2, Level 2
CE: 1.5

Keywords: Asian Americans, Mental Health Disparities, Risk / Vulnerability Factors
Level of Familiarity: Moderate
Recommended Readings: Lee, D. L., & Ahn, S. (2011). Racial discrimination and Asian mental health: A meta-analysis. The Counseling Psychologist, 39(3), 463-489. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000010381791,   Doan, S.N., Yu, S.H., Wright, B., Fung, J., Saleem, F., & Lau, A.S. (2022). Resilience and family socialization processes in ethnic minority youth: Illuminating the achievement-health paradox. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 25, 75–92. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-022-00389-1,   Tsai, W., Chiang, J. J., & Lau, A. S. (2015). The effects of self-enhancement and self-improvement on recovery from stress differ across cultural groups. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(1), 21-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615598380,   Choi, J. H. S., & Miyamoto, Y. (2023). Cultural differences in rumination and psychological correlates: The role of attribution. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 49(8), 1213–1230. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221089061,   U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Mental Health Care for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders,” Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity; A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, 2001. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44243/

Asian Americans (AAs) are the fastest growing immigrant-origin group in the United States (Budiman & Ruiz, 2021). Yet, clinical research conducted for and with AA communities is critically underfunded, with only 0.17% of NIH funding allocated towards AA research since 1992 (Doàn et al., 2019). This is concerning as AAs face significantly underserved yet high acuity mental health needs (Lui et al., 2024). Despite a wealth of evidence that structural and interpersonal racism are widely experienced by AAs, with consequences for mental and physical health (Gee et al., 2009; Lee & Ahn, 2011), there has been a historical lack of mainstream attention towards intervention-focused research addressing racism and discrimination against AA communities prior to COVID-19 (Ibrahim et al., 2024). This crucial gap underscores the need to identify how existing evidence-based interventions (EBIs) can better target mechanisms unique to AAs when facing racialized stress, while leveraging their rich cultural resources and strengths. Otherwise, EBIs fall short of addressing racialized stress to the detriment of AA mental health equity.

This symposium brings together research that investigates mechanistic intervention targets for AAs coping with racialized stress from adolescence to older adulthood. Our first presenter will share findings from an ongoing randomized prevention trial on how academically resilient adolescents of color, including AAs, respond to discrimination with rumination and experiential avoidance, and how ethnic-racial socialization shapes these emotion regulation responses, with implications for anxiety. Our second presenter will present results on how unmodulated perseverance within oppressive systems impacts AA adolescent wellbeing, and how these relationships are shaped by self-compassion, emotion suppression, and family perfectionism. Our third presenter will discuss how structural racism and the downstream consequences of race-related stress contribute to self-criticism among AA young adults. Relatedly, our fourth presenter will showcase how daily discrimination is associated with internalizing symptoms through self-critical rumination in East Asian international college students, and how this indirect path can worsen when rumination is perceived as self-improvement. Our final presenter will share qualitative findings on how Chinese older adults in Los Angeles County coped with COVID-19-related racism.

Altogether, these studies elucidate findings that point towards modifiable, mechanistic intervention targets (e.g., experiential avoidance, emotion suppression, self-criticism, rumination) for AAs managing racialized stress across life stages to advance mental health equity. Aligned with the convention theme of promoting rigorous science and inclusive affirming therapies, each talk will share implications for addressing these targets from a cognitive-behavioral lens, while acknowledging the larger sociopolitical context in which experiences of racism are situated. Research and clinical implications across presentations will be discussed by an expert in cognitive-behavioral treatment and AA mental health.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this session, the learner will be able to:
  1. Learn how Asian American experiences are situated in contexts of structural racism and oppression that impact individual mental health and coping.
  2. Learn modifiable intervention targets that may be leveraged in therapy or intervention development for Asian Americans facing racialized stress.
  3. Identify two emotion regulation responses AA adolescents may use to cope with discrimination and how ethnic-racial socialization may shape them.
  4. Describe how unmodulated perseverance can be a protective factor for mental health in resilient Asian American adolescents.
  5. Differentiate between the impacts of interpersonal and internalized racism on self-criticism in Asian American young adults.
  6. Explain how attributing rumination as self-improvement is a risk factor for depression from discrimination in East Asian international students.
  7. Understand the coping strategies and perceptions of mental health services among older Chinese Americans facing anti-Asian discrimination.

Presentations:

  • 12:07 PM - 12:24 PM CST
    (SYM 45) The Influences of Emotion Regulation and Ethnic-racial Socialization in the Relationship Between Racial/ethnic Discrimination and Anxiety Among Academically Resilient Adolescents of Color

    Speaker: Stephanie H. Yu, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) – University of California San Francisco

    Co-author: Z. Ayotola Onipede, M.A. – University of California Los Angeles

    Co-author: M. Alejandra Arce, PhD (she/her/hers) – UC Riverside

    Co-author: Farzana Saleem Adjah, Ph.D. – Stanford University

    Co-author: Stacey Doan, Ph.D. – Claremont McKenna College

    Co-author: Joey Fung, Ph.D. – Fuller School of Psychology

    Co-author: Anna S. Lau, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) – UCLA

  • 12:24 PM - 12:41 PM CST
    (SYM 45) Looking Beyond Culture: Examining the Link Between Race-related Stress and Self-criticism in Asian American Young Adults

    Speaker: Belinda Chen, M.A., C.Phil – University of California, los Angeles

    Co-author: Joey Fung, Ph.D. – Fuller School of Psychology

    Co-author: Tae Hwan Son, B.A. – University of California, Los Angeles

    Co-author: Anna S. Lau, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) – UCLA

  • 12:41 PM - 12:58 PM CST
    (SYM 45) Rethinking Self-improvement: The Role of Self-improvement and Rumination in the Context of Discrimination and Psychological Health Among East Asian Young Adults

    Speaker: Yikai Xu, B.A., M.A. (he/him/his) – New York University

    Co-author: William Tsai, Ph.D. – New York University

  • 12:58 PM - 1:15 PM CST
    (SYM 45) Navigating Discrimination: Coping Strategies Among Chinese American Older Adults in Response to Anti-asian Hate

    Speaker: Lu Dong, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) – Stony Brook University

    Co-author: Stacey Yi, MPH (she/her/hers) – RAND School of Public Policy

    Co-author: Jennifer Bouey, PhD MD (she/her/hers) – RAND

    Co-author: Eunice Wong, PhD (she/her/hers) – RAND

    Co-author: Nina Yuen-Loc, LMFT (she/her/hers) – Chinatown Service Center

    Co-author: Monica Cua, BA (she/her/hers) – Chinatown Service Center

    Co-author: Jon Ng, BA (he/him/his) – Chinatown Service Center

    Co-author: Yanqin (Eva) Li, BA (she/her/hers) – Chinatown Service Center - Behavioral Health Division