Need for School-based Mental Health Professionals of Filipino Descent
By Christine Marie Q. Turner, M.Ed, NCC, June 2025

I often don’t see many school-based mental health professionals of Filipino descent, yet it is important for us to be in these spaces due to increases in youth mental health crises and after anti-Asian hate following the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, there are disparities in representation. Many of our schools are increasingly diverse, yet the school staff and school counselor populations do not reflect the growing diversity of our youth in schools.

 

The American School Counselor Association Member Demographics illustrate this, as well as the Pew Research Center. And many of our Filipino American youth may feel pressured by the model minority myth, yet also feel that they conform to it either. In fact, Filipino Americans can have some of the highest rates of high school dropouts, teenage pregnancy, suicidality, depression, eating disorders, and substance abuse (Flores et al, 2015; Tuazon et al., 2019), as well as lower college attainment (Ong & Viernes, 2012), compared to other Asian subgroups.

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This being said, it’s important for there to be more mental health prevention, support, and treatment services for Filipino American school-aged youth.

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References:

American School Counselor Association. (2023).

Member demographics. https://www.schoolcounselor.org/getmedia/9c1d81ab-2484-4615-9dd7-d788a241beaf/member-demographics.pdf Flores, N., Supan, J., Kreutzer, C. B., Samson, A., Coffey, D. M., & Javier, J. R. (2015).

Prevention of Filipino youth behavioral health disparities: Identifying barriers and facilitators to participating in "Incredible Years," an evidence-based parenting intervention, Los Angeles, California, 2012.

Preventing Chronic Disease, 12, E178. https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd12.150186 Ong, P., & Viernes, K. (2013).

Filipino Americans and educational downward mobility. Asian American Policy Review, 23, 21-39. Schaeffer, K. (2021, December 10).

America’s public school teachers are far less racially and ethnically diverse than their students. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/12/10/americas-public-school-teachers-are-far-less-racially-and-ethnically-diverse-than-their-students/

Tuazon, V. E., Gonzalez, E., Gutierrez, D. and Nelson, L. (2019). Colonial mentality and mental health help-seeking of Filipino Americans. Journal of Counseling & Development, 97: 352-363. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcad.12284