May holds two deeply intersectional observances — Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month.
These conversations are deeply connected, rooted in identity, culture, community care, and lived experience. They remind us that Disability Justice exists at the intersections—where disabled people are also navigating race, ethnicity, migration, stigma, trauma, and access, often all at once.
For many AANHPI communities, conversations around mental health have historically been shaped by silence, stigma, cultural expectations, generational trauma, racism, and limited access to culturally responsive care. In many families and communities, survival has often taken priority over emotional well-being, leaving little room for open conversations about mental health, disability, trauma, or access needs. Seeking support can sometimes carry fear, shame, or misunderstanding, especially within systems that already fail marginalized communities.
At the same time, disabled, neurodivergent, Deaf, chronically ill, and mentally ill people within these communities continue building spaces rooted in care, advocacy, healing, and collective liberation. Across movements, classrooms, organizing spaces, online communities, and cultural spaces, people continue creating pathways toward visibility, support, and belonging despite ongoing systemic barriers.
Looking through a Disability Justice lens means understanding that mental health cannot be separated from the systems people are forced to navigate every day. Housing insecurity, language barriers, healthcare inequities, anti-Asian violence, poverty, immigration status, policing, inaccessible care, and racism all impact mental well-being. Access to support is not equal, and many communities continue to face barriers when trying to receive affirming, culturally competent, and accessible care.
For many disabled people within AANHPI communities, these realities overlap in deeply personal ways. Navigating healthcare systems that dismiss pain, mental health systems that lack cultural competency, schools that fail to provide accommodations, or workplaces that stigmatize disability can take an enormous emotional toll. These systems often expect people to survive without fully acknowledging the trauma and exhaustion caused by systemic inequities.
The rise in anti-Asian hate and violence over the past several years has also had a profound mental health impact across communities. Fear, grief, anxiety, hypervigilance, and collective trauma do not exist in isolation. Many disabled people within AANHPI communities are carrying these realities while simultaneously navigating ableism, inaccessibility, economic inequities, and isolation.
It also means recognizing the diversity that exists within AANHPI communities themselves. There is no singular experience. Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities, Southeast Asian communities, East Asian communities, South Asian communities, and mixed-race individuals all experience mental health, disability, and systemic inequities differently. Those realities deserve visibility and nuance.
Too often, conversations flatten AANHPI communities into a single narrative while ignoring the ways colonization, displacement, war, migration, and systemic oppression continue shaping people’s lives and access to care. Mental health conversations that fail to acknowledge these histories risk overlooking the root causes of harm many communities continue to experience.
Too often, disabled people within AANHPI communities are erased from conversations around representation, advocacy, and wellness. Yet they continue leading, organizing, creating, educating, and caring for their communities every single day. Queer and trans AANHPI disabled people, in particular, often navigate layered forms of marginalization while still building pathways toward healing and belonging.
We also recognize that mental health looks different across cultures and communities. Healing is not always linear, and support does not always look the same from person to person. For some, healing may come through therapy or medication. For others, it may come through community, cultural practices, storytelling, rest, spirituality, art, mutual aid, or being surrounded by people who understand their lived experience. All forms of care deserve acknowledgment.
Community care has always existed within marginalized communities, even when systems failed to provide support. We see it in mutual aid efforts, intergenerational caregiving, grassroots organizing, storytelling, cultural traditions, and the creation of accessible spaces where people can show up as their full selves.
We see it in disabled people advocating for language access at community clinics. In organizers creating sensory-conscious spaces. In caregivers balancing multiple responsibilities while still showing up for their communities. In community members checking on one another during moments of crisis, violence, grief, and uncertainty. These acts of care are powerful, especially in systems that often treat marginalized people as disposable.
Mental health is not simply an individual issue. It is deeply connected to safety, dignity, access, and survival.
Disability Justice reminds us that care must be collective, intersectional, and rooted in the understanding that all people deserve to exist fully and safely within their communities. It asks us to move beyond awareness alone and toward building systems, communities, and relationships that prioritize access, healing, and liberation.
As we recognize AANHPI Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month, we remain grounded in the understanding that representation matters, access is essential, and collective care is a vital part of Disability Justice.
This month and beyond, we honor the disabled, neurodivergent, Deaf, chronically ill, and mentally ill people within AANHPI communities whose leadership and lived experiences continue shaping movements toward justice, care, and liberation for all of us.
You can access the accompanying resource guide here.
