Korean and Vietnamese youths had higher rates of suicide when compared to other young Asian Americans, revealing disparities within the different subgroups that make up the U.S. Asian American population, a new analysis shows.
Overall, Asian American youths had lower rates of suicide than non-Asian Americans, 9.17 deaths per 100,000 compared to 10.77, according to findings published earlier this month in JAMA Pediatrics.
Disparities emerge once the data is broken down by individual ethnic groups.
Among youths, suicide rates were lowest among Indians (6.91), and highest among Vietnamese (10.57) and the “all other” group (13.37), which includes ethnic groups for which there was not enough data for individual analysis, such as Bangladeshis, Cambodians, Hmong, Mongolians, Pakistanis, Taiwanese, and Thais.
The suicide rate among Korean youth was 8.44, Filipino youth, 7.64, and Chinese youth, 7.59.
“The important takeaway of this study is that we don’t lump data about Asian Americans into one large category, because when we do, it hides underlying disparities,” said Anthony L. Bui, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, who was one of the study’s authors.
“By disaggregating these data we gain a better understanding of what’s happening in these communities and which interventions could really help,” he said in a university news release.
Bui and his colleagues calculated suicide rates from 2018 to 2021 among youths ages 15 to 19 and young adults ages 20 to 24 for the five largest Asian American subgroups — Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese — and all other Asian American individuals.
The findings show that when the suicide data “were aggregated into a single Asian American category, the lower rates of suicide among Chinese individuals masked the higher rates in other subgroups,” according to the study.
“When we’re designing policies and programs to address this problem, we need to think about which communities to focus on and how to make our mental health interventions appropriate, taking into account things like culture, language and community resources,” Bui said in the news release.
Tina J. Kauh, a senior program officer with the philanthropic Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, feels encouraged by these efforts to “disaggregate” data within the Asian American population. The Foundation, as reported by AsAmNews, issued a call for proposals earlier this year to address how “researchers should cluster the diverse Asian American population into smaller subgroups.”
Kauh said many states, when reporting state data, still combine Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Asian Americans in particular — who account for 20 million people with origins from countries in East, South, and Southeast Asia — embody immense diversity with different backgrounds and histories, Kauh said. Aggregating this diverse population, Kauh told URL Media, makes it appear that all “Asian Americans are faring really well.”
“You have Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans who came to the U.S. in the 1800s, and then you have people from Southeast Asian countries who came as refugees, and not as voluntary immigrants, in the 1900s,” she said.
The findings in suicide rates did not surprise Kauh, an expert in child and adolescent development.
“I’m generalizing here, but, Southeast Asians are more likely to have come to the U.S. with a lot of personal trauma as refugees, and Chinese Americans have historically been in the U.S for much longer, generationally,” Kauh said. “There’s reason to think that there would be differences across the subgroups.”
May yer Thao, president and CEO of the Hmong American Partnership, can attest to that.
Thao is among leaders who have sounded the alarm over the U.S. Census Bureau’s decision to classify Hmong people as East Asian, while Lahu and Tai Dam people, as well as Urdu speakers were classified as “Other Asian,” as detailed by the Sahan Journal.
Hmong, Lahu, and Tai Dam people have roots in China, but they mainly came to the United States as refugees from Southeast Asian countries during and in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and struggle with economic insecurity at higher rates than East Asian groups who have been in the U.S. longer, according to Sahan Journal.
“If we are misclassified as East Asians, there’s very much a likelihood that we could potentially be losing out on resources that our community still needs,” Thao said.
