How is mental health defined across the world? Her research may surprise you.

AWARD-WINNING ADVOCATE SEIKA BROWN IS CONNECTING WITH PEOPLE AND MAY BE FINDING WE’RE NOT SO DIFFERENT AFTER ALL

By Kristina Benoist

What do you do when your high school principal rejects your idea for creating more mental health resources? If you’re Seika Brown, you turn your class project into an entire youth advocacy organization.

At 19-years-old, Seika has already become an inspiring mental health advocate, recently winning the 2021 Mental Health America mPower Award. Starting in her home state of Washington, she co-founded and ran Archnova, a youth organization that worked on mental health policy change. And now she has her sights set on a global scale. 

Through her work as Founder and CEO of YLG Research, she’s asking the question: How is mental health defined across different cultures and countries?

We sat down with Seika to talk about what mental health means to her – and what she’s learning it means to the world.

IDONTMIND (IDM): How are you today? How’s your mental health?

Seika Brown (SB): I'm up in Seattle, and we have this heatwave going on right now. And that is absolutely miserable. It's like 115 degrees outside. It's terrible. But you know what, I’m living!

IDM: If you don't mind sharing, I'd love to hear a little about your mental health journey. 

SB: Yeah, absolutely. I think the first time I ever really got exposed to the term mental health was when I was eight years old. My brother attempted suicide, and I was so young that I didn't exactly know what mental health was. I didn't know what suicide was. I had no exposure to those terms, and so I was really confused. And confusion leads to anger, and anger just leads to so many other things. 

I was fighting off these thoughts, like – was it me? Was it something I did? I think that's the first time I really dipped my toes into struggling with my own mental health or beginning to understand what that even really means. I think the scariest thing was that I started to wonder if that same thing that happened to my brother was going to happen to me too. As I got older, I kind of came to terms with my own mental health and kind of recovered from that. But I think a big part of my story has always been my brother's attempt. There was a lot of recovery from my brother's attempt at a very young age. 

“I’m half Japanese and I’m half English, and my parents have very different views on what mental health is, but one’s not better or worse than the other.”

IDM: So how did your experience with your brother lead you into advocacy work? 

SB: When I got into high school, I expected that the resources that my brother lacked in high school would be there four years later — but they weren't. And then my freshman year of high school, a recent graduate attempted suicide. I just remember being shocked. You know, four or five years ago, my own brother had attempted suicide. I kept thinking, why do we have to wait until after these attempts? Why don't we go treat the problem beforehand? I think that was really the start of it for me in terms of advocating for mental health.

In my sophomore year of high school, I had a psychology project where I had to find a problem and come up with some kind of solution for it. I focused on the lack of resources for youth mental health in the Seattle area. Through the project, I tried to answer the problem of rising stress and anxiety levels in Washington state by adding this kind of mid-step resource hub. So instead of students going straight to counselors, which can be kind of scary, they can look up the resources around them first and maybe choose where they want to go from there. 

It was a simple thing to actually create. And my principal said no to implementing it. I was a super stubborn 15-year-old. I had to think about who she couldn’t say no to, so we went to her boss — the superintendent. But I couldn’t just walk into the superintendent's office without having any credibility. So I reached out to a bunch of state legislators and asked them what they were doing in regards to mental health policy. And then I asked them what they thought about this resource hub. 

One legislator responded to me. Her name’s Tina Orwall. We met and spent two hours talking about mental health – and at the end of the meeting, she asked if I wanted to get some friends together to try and pass a bill. So that was the start of Archnova. We were a group focused on youth advocacy and policy. For about three years, my friends and I worked in two legislative sessions. One bill got halted in committee, sadly, but the other bill got passed in 2019. And that bill covered student well-being centers across Washington state. It gives students in every school district the opportunity to have conversations with adults and communicate what they need. It was super exciting and empowering to do that kind of work.

IDM: So now that you’re in college, how has your focus shifted? 

SB: I run a research initiative that’s focused on having an intergenerational conversation about mental health. So I’m researching how mental health is defined across cultures. I’m half Japanese and I’m half English, and my parents have very different views on what mental health is, but one's not better or worse than the other. There's no problem that we're trying to solve with this research. It's just about having a conversation. We've been able to talk to different cultures and different countries — about six of them so far. And it's been super cool to see how people define and talk about mental health. 

“This is not just a country-based problem. This is not just a continent-based problem. This is something that we’re all experiencing across the world.”

IDM: As you’ve been conducting these interviews with people from different countries, do you think there’s a common thread within all of them? Or are we all talking about and handling mental health in different ways?

SB: I think the coolest thing is that everyone is talking about mental health. It’s not a new problem anywhere in the world — this has always been an existing issue. Each language has its own way of talking about it. They might have a different term for mental health, but it still exists and it's always existed in the culture. 

I also think I'm finding that there's a lack of resources in Europe, there's a lack of resources in Asia. I think it's good to realize this is not just a country-based problem. This is not just a continent-based problem. This is something that we're all experiencing across the world. 

IDM: Absolutely. I can’t wait to see how the rest of your research comes out. I think you’re going to find out such important information about mental health across the globe. So, what do you think is the biggest challenge we need to overcome when it comes to mental health?

SB: As I reflect on my work so far, one problem is that we talk about things in a way that perpetuates stigmas for people. For example, I'm half-Japanese, and I always hear, 'Well, of course, mental health is going to be bad in Asian culture. No one's going to be talking about mental health.' But I’ve talked to people from Japan, and it’s just not true at all. People may have a different term for it, and we all may talk about it differently, but everyone experiences it. Those stereotypes really enforce stigma, not just in one country, but globally. We put people of a certain race or a certain age into a box — and it’s stigmatizing. It’s super dangerous.

IDM: What’s one thing that gives you hope about mental health? 

SB: I think the thing that gives me hope is that the more conversations I have with people across the world, I realize that it’s not a hard conversation to have. You know, the first five minutes are always a little awkward, right? But I think people can and want to talk about their experience and their mental health. Whether we realize it or not, we all talk about it. When we talk about our days, how we've handled something stressful, our emotions and thoughts throughout the day — that's talking about mental health. 

And I also think it gives me hope that we're slowly de-stigmatizing mental health. Mental health is a universal thing. It's not a specific problem. It's just an experience. 

“I think people can and want to talk about their experience and their mental health. Whether we realize it or not, we all talk about it. When we talk about our days, how we’ve handled something stressful, our emotions and thoughts throughout the day — that’s talking about mental health.”

IDM: You’ve talked before about the importance of listening in mental health. Would you mind sharing a little more about that?

SB: I think the best relationships I have always come down to the fact that the other person listens — whether it be in my work or at home with my parents or with my friends. When someone listens and doesn't respond just to respond. They listen because they genuinely care and are curious about what you think and what you have to say. I think that human interaction is so easily left out in every area of life — especially when we talk about mental health. 

I think going into every conversation and teaching people what mental health is, it's kind of the wrong thing to do. I reflect on when I was eight years old and I didn't know what mental health was. In thinking of my brother’s situation, I wish that I was able to have a conversation about mental health with him — not with my parents, not with his therapist. I want to be able to listen to what his actual experience was. Listening is about understanding someone fully — not just their diagnosis or one situation. I think it's so flawed that we turned mental health into an industry when it's just an experience. That's why listening is the number one thing. It's not always about finding the problem or finding a solution. It's about making connections.

IDM: Yes, I really love that. So what’s next for you in your research? What are the next steps for you? 

SB: I'm working towards getting funded and sponsored for my research, which will help me do this outside of Zoom. Post-COVID, hopefully, I'll be able to travel and have these in-person conversations about mental health and also encourage people in that country to have those conversations too. I've been thinking about how I don't want to go into a country just asking how they talk about mental health. I want to see how they talk about it together in their culture. Explaining your culture to someone who doesn't know it is hard, but talking about shared experience in a culture where both people experienced it, it's really nice and really easy. And that's what the future looks like for me right now. 

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Learn more about Seika’s work and her research on her website. If you want to share your definition of mental health and take part in Seika’s research, there is a form on her website to apply.