I learnt from the video interview that families usually migrate to the US from African countries like Ethiopia to improve their lives or seek refuge from challenges such as war or lack of access to resources in their home countries, and the families tend to face difficulties acculturating in a completely new environment, especially the young children who are raised in a different culture, which the parents don’t know much about, leading to a cultural gap as well as communications gap, since many parents also tend to work long hours and hardly talk about their struggles and vulnerabilities openly.
It is thus understandable that the kids often grow up feeling alone and depressed and misunderstood as they have to learn on their own how to navigate the foreign cultures and form their own identity or reconcile their Ethiopian identity with Black American identity, without the opportunity to connect meaningfully with their parents, who are unaware of the need to check on their children’s emotional health or who tend to minimise their struggles, especially if the parents see mental health issues as a taboo in the community.
Like the interviewee, Hamrawit Tesfa, noted, there is a need to have more open conversations to acknowledge and address the mental health issues, such as stress coming from social media bombarding young adults with confusing messages and from peer pressure and competition as well as from the capitalistic society that glamorises popularity and materialism telling the masses to attach their identity to material possessions and status, and it is indeed never too late to talk about the pain and struggles the young adults go through, for acknowledging them can bring healing.
I also learnt that the community and religious institutions can help find ways to start these difficult conversations in order to bridge the gaps between parents and children, and the Ethiopian American family resource center also provides educational and other resources to help the families.
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