Dr Lee’s Talking Point: Asian Women & Mental Illness

Given that today’s feature is a repost (and given the reasons for it being reposted), I thought it might be interesting to also have a discussion about Asian women and mental illness. The traditional image of Asian women is that they are very peaceful, stable and good housewives, but things certainly aren’t always this way. This seems particularly true of very hot – or at least sexy – Asian women. I guess the clash between a sexy girl and the expectations of women in more traditional cultures can often lead to friction, or even abuse. And the culture clash between east and west for first and second generation Asian girls can often lead to problems as well. Anyway, please share your own experiences with Asian women and mental illness – I also strongly welcome Asian women themselves to speak about their own problems if they feel comfortable to do so. Obviously, please be sure to keep everything anonymous.

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0 thoughts on “Dr Lee’s Talking Point: Asian Women & Mental Illness”

  1. I have presonally witnesses mental health issues displayed from several asian women i’ve known, hot and non hot.

    My guess is that mental health issues are widespead among all nationalities of women.

  2. Not sure it would be classified as mental illness on the women’s side or not but a couple things I have notice with friends of my wifes.

    One was a mail order bride from the Philippines. This girl was hot enough she could have been featured here. Anyway here husband was very controlling. He would not give here a key to the house, kept nearly every door inside locked except the bath, laundry and bedroom. After 5 years of this she finally left him. She was not to have friends, any money she made went to him. It got to the point that she would call my wife and she would call his boss to have him go home to let here in the house when she had to go home because the child was sick. She had to take him to work with her. He would ignore her phone calls. Summer time her is 100 degrees with 90% humidity. Not a type of weather to be stuck outside with a child.

    Another one, also filipina, her husband gets made at her because there is no money. Yet he went out at the drop of a hat and spent $300 on a television accessory. But it is her fault there is no money.

    I believe for the most part Asian women in general are seen as the this docile, obedient, willing house slave by western men. When in reality they are strong willed and very independent women. A lot of them will get themselves into a marriage without knowing what rights they have to get out it. If they are getting married to get to the states they get told by their husbands that if they get a divorce they get deported. Not so, all that is needed is to prove abuse whether mental or physical and they Visa to stay is granted, especially if there is a child involved.

    I think a lot just get pushed to the point that they just snap and then it gets chalked up to just being mental when in fact they just do not have the proper knowledge to get out of the relationship.

  3. Regarding the above The Philippines now requires every Overseas Worker and woman going to the US on a Fiancée Visa to take a course which covers their rights and about abuse.
    Any western man thinking Filipinas are docile submissives hasn’t done the homework. They are very family oriented and hard workers and take care of their men well, but they don’t put up with nonsense either.

  4. Summary after knowing, being associated with, or having been in a long-term relationship with.. let’s say at least 10+ Asian women (or a multiple of that number)..

    Asian women exhibit or are affected by far less mental illness than any other ethnic group that I’ve been associated with. Would say that they are (without sounding racist) the most intelligent, balanced, and healthy women that I have even known. No contest, no ethnic specific issues to report (despite the endless unfounded stereotypes)!!

    Of course, I’m biased and blessed; but that has been my well-researched and exhaustive observation and conclusion–and a few dozen more won’t likely change it.

    Also worth noting: We are all more equal and similar than we admit or care to acknowledge. Such perceived racial differences or ethnic stereotypes exist and flourish more in our minds than in reality.

  5. @weekender: I certainly didn’t mean to imply that Asian women were more prone to mental illness than other races – it’s just that they are the subject of this site. Also, I am curious to know: have you ever dated any Vietnamese women?

  6. OK, I finally agree with Doc. This girl needs a boob job!

    Seriously, this is an interesting topic. I agree the problem is in no way limited to Asian women (or even limited to women). In fact, based on women I have known, I would estimate their is a lower percentage of mental illness in Asian women. But that proves nothing, of course.

    Even if that were true, I’m guessing their might be issues unique to (or more prevalent among) Asian women. I’ll be interested to see the responses, especially from the women who visit this site.

    And I mean this in all sincerity: Let’s post a beautiful Asian woman soon! And Happy Holidays (whichever ones you celebrate) and New Year to all who post here, and especially to those who are posted.

  7. I will add in my 2 yen as a first time poster.

    I have been living in Japan almost 5 years now and just recently broke up with my 3rd girlfriend since being here. The first two were due to jealousy fits, the most recent due to the lack of time she had for me (I won’t get into the details on that).

    The most recent ex is one of the most gorgeous women I have seen in Japan, yet she wanted (and still wants) to be the person she spends the rest of her life with. We dated for 6 months and took a trip back to California to see my family and friends, and it was an amazing trip. We got back, and her modeling agency asked her to do some shooting with Hooters for their first location in Japan. They really loved her looks (she is half korean/japanese and really tall, so she stands out everywhere) and her personality PLUS English ability and offered her a job as a Hooters girl, which she accepted. (Her picture/videos are very easy to find. Just Google Hooters Tokyo, and the girl you see the most who looks MUCH taller than everyone is my ex)

    Being a new company she worked a lot, and I had 0 time with her for about 2 months. I was in a point where I just felt like I had no relationship at all, so I ended it.

    So now that the background is done, because of her looks, she had a LOT of guys use her for them, to be their arm candy. She has been deceived many times, and I think that has slowly built this trauma into this mental, hmmmm, block, that all men are liars/cheaters/etc. Until she met me. But of course I had to get blamed, and get the comments of mistrust here and there, but those are another guy’s problem, not mine. Also being beautiful, I feel many guys let her get away with being childish (date a Japanese girl, get used to this…), but I didn’t put up with her doing that to me.

    She would often say she feels like she is mentally sick because of what men did to her (plus her childhood wasn’t exactly good at all), and I agree with her on some parts. Like mentioned above, it isn’t always the women who are to blame, a lot of men drive women crazy.

    But a LOT of men are driven crazy by women! Haha!

  8. Someone has to say it: All women are slightly insane.

    That said, the major problem for Asian women, and men, may be a lesser ability to seek help – from a social, educational, and care provider perspectives – when compared with the USA, for example.

  9. @DrNo: you have an excellent point. I think one of the main reasons my Asian lady friends like me so much is because they can talk to me about things that are taboo in their culture – stuff they need to talk about.

    @TAtoms: you have a good point also. When a woman is mentally ill, chances are she has been abused or at least taken advantage of by a man or men in the past.

  10. For those that thought TAtoms post was too long to read, here is a summary:

    I dated a tall hot Japanese/Korean girl. She was a model and was so hot that all other men treated her as a sex object, but couldn’t keep her in her place. I did though, and I’m also so cool that *I* dumped *her*. Did I mention she was hot, and I dated her?

  11. I don’t think asian women have more issues than others. In fact I don’t think they are the victims. We are… They drive us crazy, TAtoms said it all.

    There is a big difference in cultures, that plays a big part in misunderstandings and expectations not being aligned. Plus, every asian country has some diff culture and you have to dig in, to understand how the women are brought up.

    There’s one striking note. Asian women can get a lot of attention out here in the west. They may change a lot because of that, sometimes loosing their balance. It’s too fast, too strong.

    I’ve had my share of relationships where women have been so played with before, they can’t trust easily a new man. Or they become senseless players themselves. I’m mostly talking about filipinas in this case. Lovely, but moody and unreliable so many times.

    TAtom I did search and found some hot tall girls in Hooters Tookyo. She’s gorgeous! Maybe you gotta understand her busy schedule for the time being (this comes from a very busy guy, I know what I’m talking about and the personal problems that gives me too). Think about it, if you say she’s still so much into you. And I’m assuming that is not an illness she’s got. 😉

  12. I dated a Japanese gal about 5 years ago. We dated for a couple of months and were never intimate.

    During that time, I started to notice that a lot of things she told me about herself weren’t adding up. All signs were pointing to her being a compulsive liar, because she was contradicting herself several times over.

    My birthday was coming up and she wanted take a 4-day getaway to celebrate. She wanted to fly there and stay in a 5 star hotel for 3 nights. And, get this…she wanted ME to pay for the whole thing! For MY OWN birthday! So to see if she was willing to contribute financially, I said “Well, maybe we can stay for one night.” She responded, “Don’t be cheap!” Can you believe that?

    So at that point I broke it off.

    About a week later, she randomly showed up at my place unannounced at 2:00 in the morning. On a work night! She said she had something important she wanted to talk about. So we sat down. And she said, “Here…hold this.”

    She handed me a freakin’ exactoblade!

    Naturally, I was thinking WTF??? So I put the exactoblade down on a table out of her reach. She got up and handed it to me again. So I just held it behind my back away from her.

    Then she gave me this whole speech about how I might as well cut out her heart (pulling her shirt aside to reveal her chest for melodramatic effect), since breaking up with her was essentially the same thing. (Keep in mind…we were NEVER intimate.) After the awkward conversation, I sent her on her way and told her not to contact me again.

    My birthday was the following week. And I went out celebrating with my friends. Halfway through the night, I got a call some gal that I’d never heard of. This person on phone claimed to be friends with the gal I dated. Yet, the gal I dated never mentioned this person’s name once. The “friend” on the phone proceeded to tell me how good I was for the gal I dated and how I should consider getting back together with her.

    Here’s the thing…The person on the phone and the gal I dated were CLEARLY the same person! She didn’t even try to change her voice. So I told this “alter ego” to tell the gal I dated to leave me alone. That was the last I heard from her.

    I’m not sure if she was a schitzo…or if she had multiple personality disorder or what. But she was still the craziest chick I’ve ever date.

  13. Has anyone ever noticed that the mental problems seem to be cyclical?

    DrNO: I asked several gorgeous Asian ladies I have been intimate with (simultaneously) if I could improve upon your response to TAToms — after they put their clothes back on, they said “No”.

  14. This is a very interesting subject, one that I probably have a little input on. Growing up with only sisters, but hung out with mostly male cousins in my twenties socially has given me a very different perspective.

    Asian women in this country compared to Asian women from Asian countries is apples and oranges. My friends who are or have dated Asian women have all got the same advice from me. Go to the source. In this country thanks to the prevailing tastes that has produced situations and websites such as this one, have turned the whole crop pretty spoiled.

    The problem is once someone comes to this country they can quickly also change and after a few years be very different.

    As far as mental stability, I think the Asian cultures tend to repress things, live in denial about a lot of stuff. This creates a lot of internal stress, which will come out eventually, either in blow out situations like Virginia Tech, or like the situation a couple of years ago with that Wellesley College student who stabbed an ex in his dorm after he broke up with her.

    From what I have seen the men who tend to be attracted to Asian women sometimes are control freaks, want to have someone they feel much more overpowering with and this might explain the fact so many tall dudes end up with the tiny women.

    Plus some of the men who have an actual Asian fetish are just downright strange. Which actually includes a couple of people that I used to consider friends.

    One of them I actually met swimming at Lake Waban the summer of 1986. He was a total beach bum, but dabbled a little in photography, only dated Asian women, mostly very rich international students. One of his ex’s father used to send 100,000 a year for expenses for school and housing. This was like fourteen years ago.

    Anyways he ended up marrying a gorgeous Japanese woman, had a kid with her and moved to New Zealand.

    Ironically enough the dude ended up in a pretty lucrative field, after bouncing around for years mostly just living off these women.

    Another dude I met in the same town, used to hang out at Asian parties for years at this women’s college in the same area,
    dated dozens of them, ended up being pretty well known from the grapevine and he was a bit of a freak too. But both ultimately were kind of nice guys, just a little strange.

  15. Right now I have an acquaintance who flew to Thailand to hang with someone he met through a friend. She is mid thirties with a graduate degree, has a nice car and obviously from an upper middle class family. Meanwhile my friend is very comfortable, but does not like to spend much of his fortune. I once did some work for him, after he paid me by taking me to Paparazzi, I ordered a beer and he flipped out, insisting that he was’nt covering for that. The dude makes substantially more than what I make, has no dependents or pets and owns around 5 million dollars in property plus is a developer!!!

    Before he left, I told him to go to Laos, hike up some mountain and find a woman in a small village with no running water, because with his attitude towards money, that is the kind of woman that would be able to deal with that kind of attitude about money…

  16. Tatom’s story about this half Korean half Japanese woman is interesting in that in Japan the Koreans are still discriminated against, even though a lot of them have been living there since the turn of the century. After the Japanese annexed Taiwan and Korea after the Sino-Japan war of 1895, a certain amount of Koreans and Taiwanese moved over. The Koreans were annexed in 1910 I think… I still have second cousins in Tokyo, originally Taiwanese who I have not seen since the early seventies. Anyways someone who is half Korean and half Japanese is going to have some serious issues of identity. She probably does’nt like to admit that fact too much to people, and the conflicting emotions must cause some internal stress. From the couple of Japanese women I have hug out with including one that was half Korean, I think this culture is especially repressive for their women.

  17. I have been living in asia for almost 20 years, from korea to thailand, china hong kong, singapour, malaysia, turkey…

    I think that Asian women are much more balanced than the average western women.

    Among the dozens of girl I dated, only one has been creating trouble, she wanted to get a kid to get married and escape china…

    from my years in europe, I recall girls and women with a lot more behavior disorder.
    Asian women living in the west are probably a complete different story. All of the ones I know, who grew up in europe are more european than me.

    All together, I would say that asian women are well down to earth, balanced and don’t need to visit a psy anytime in their live. Exception made for the Singapourian who should all get a subscription right at birth

  18. @rotaryseven She definitely had her issues… Japanese people didn’t like her. Moved to France, Parisians didn’t like her for being Japanese. She couldn’t find anywhere to just be, and enjoy life like everyone else. These experiences continue to traumatize her many years later…

  19. I’ve been appreciating A-S for a couple of years now and finally decided to post a comment on this subject.

    My experience with Asian women is limited, but I know of 2 women who had mental issues. One is a Korean wife of a friend of mine. She is in a technical field and has very high expectations for her husband and kids. Normal, I think, for Asians. However, she is very unhappy that her (Caucasian) husband has not made several million dollars yet. Also, although she is OK at work, she refuses to go out in public for any kind of social event — even with friends of many years.

    I went out a few times with an attractive 50-ish Chinese woman who I’ve known for a few years. I discovered that she is on depression medication and does not want me to take her picture because she has too many wrinkles! She is REALLY afraid of getting old and losing her beauty. To me, she is a sweet person who looks in her 40’s but she won’t believe me when I compliment her on her looks.

    I am sharing this not to stereotype, nor to generalize, but to hint that maybe Asian women tend to be too hard on themselves, which, in turn, causes mental anguish — to say the least.

  20. There is a much greater stigma in east Asia about seeking professional help for mental problems. One is expected to be strong and suck it up. Any other attempt to cope (other than binge drinking!) is seen as being weak in character.

    Had a Japanese (90% of her life spent there) girlfriend for a few years. Although she was spoiled by her parents (clothes/fancy private schools etc) they also traumatized her with verbal and physical abuse. She had panic attacks, anger outbursts that came out of nowhere over the most trivial things. Once my mom called, she decided I lied to her about the caller and said it was another woman (I was faithful), flew into a jealous rage and would not speak to me for a day. I suggested she needed therapy and for that she didn’t speak to me for three days.

    Briefly dated a Taiwanese woman who came to the US 20 years ago. Insanely jealous and insecure.

    Dated another Taiwanese woman who had been in the US 15 years. Self-obsessed, had Narcissistic Personality Disorder as defined by the DSM-IV. Every decision in life, no matter how seemingly trivial, was made in light of what would net her the greatest gain in money, power, or social status. Also flew into jealous rages (once again I was 100% faithful) over nothing. She was always right, never once admitted a mistake or apologized (although it seemed as if I was constantly apologizing!).

    I’m currently in love with a wonderful Japanese lady, have known her a few years. Well balanced and cheerful, she certainly has her worries and times of feeling down, but she deals with them in healthy mature ways. Although middle-aged she could easily for 15 years younger. People are shocked she acts so “adult”, because her looks don’t match her maturity!

  21. …oops I meant she could easily pass for 15 years younger.
    Beautiful, sweet, smart, sensitive and generous, and constantly turning heads. I’m a lucky guy.

  22. I’ve seen or heard many of these stories in women of various nationalities and cultures. Reminds me a generalization about women that I heard awhile back:

    Beauty, brains, stable personality. You only get two.

    My Viet siren and her sisters were gorgeous, witty, smart and horribly insecure. Trusted no one outside her family (not unusual for a refugee.) She also had a vicious and unpredictable temper. Yet she was also the sweetest woman I had ever met.

    There was commentary on NPR yesterday about the resistance of Asian families in the US South to seek counseling about their issues as a result of the BP oil spill. Reflects similar comments above.

    I have no real conclusion, except to note that very beautiful women tend to also be very insecure, regardless of culture. Women with plainer looks usually have more stable personalities.

  23. Some of this may be perpetuated by Western (read US) culture. Asian women are seen as exotic; take a look at any free porn site (Xtube, etc.) Do you see a section on Slavic women? I think there was a post here awhile back on male celebrities and their younger Asian wives, wondering if these were situation of Asian trophies.

  24. i have had experience with asian women (chinese/vietnamese) being very insecure about themselves, however i don’t think i want to experience an overly secure asian woman either. i think it takes time to find the right woman no matter what culture/nationality. no woman will be perfect.

    it’s if you can “deal” with the insecurity (or whatever the issue), only then can the relationship work. i’m learning to do this right now.

  25. @ Dr. Lee, I’ve dated five Asian women in my life. The one I’d mentioned was the craziest by far. Coincidentally, she was the only one of the five that was born outside the U.S. (Japan)

    The other women were all Asian-American. They were normal for the most part and so were the break-ups.

    So one bad see out of the five isn’t too bad. Then again, that IS 20%.

    In your experience, do you think that percentage is a valid representation of mental illness in all non-American-born Asians around the world?

  26. I honestly couldn’t say what sort of percentages we’d be looking at, and it’s heavily dependent on how you define things as well. In my own experience, Vietnamese women seem to have more problems than most.

  27. Also for criteria, are you using the precise DSM-IV (published by American Psychiatric Association) requirements that define a mental disorder (“causes significant impairment in work, school, legal or financial difficulties, social functioning, and relationships”) or are you using more loose popular everyday definitions of “crazy”? Being ordinary run-of-the-mill high-maintenance, insecure or low self-esteem is not a mental disorder, unless it results in rages, panic attacks, inability to hold a job, over-isolation, etc.

    All my experience has been with actual Asians (a dozen or so) not Asian-Americans. I’ve no interest in the latter as for the most part they have been ruined by American materialism, feminism, religious fanaticism, sexphobia, selfish “me-1st” mentality, and (on average far more than in Asia, yes I know there are exceptions) obesity as they age.

  28. First-time poster.

    Wish I had more experience to draw upon, but the one Taiwanese gal I dated for a year was as unstable as she was desirable – and that’s saying a lot. I lay all the blame for this on her abusive father, where learning to “charm Dad” became a highly refined survival skill. As a result, her less-charming sister took the lion’s share of his abuse, and would be living like a homeless person today if not for her older sister’s support. To top it off my ex gf added to the mess by marrying an emotionally unstable psychologist, which goes to show the tendency of women to repeat their negative pasts. The take-away lesson was that any woman who goes all-out to maximize her “hotness” – may well be masking insecurities that run deep, and playing the only survival card she has – men.

    The Japanese gal I eventually married couldn’t have been more different – I learned my lesson the first time around, and had no intent of perpetuating another Sam Kinison experience. She was stable and pleasant and we’ve been together for twenty years. But unlike my ex who was, I suppose, perpetually running away from her past, my wife never fully acculturated to America and misses her homeland more with each passing year. By Japanese standards, living in America is not in itself a huge plus – it’s just different.

  29. @ nobnob: The take-away lesson was that any woman who goes all-out to maximize her “hotness” – may well be masking insecurities that run deep, and playing the only survival card she has – men.

    Yes, I did allude to this in my introduction. It is my experience that the “hotter” they are, the more likely they are to have problems.

  30. I had a girlfriend for 2 years who was so controlled by her jaded mother, that there was no way we could have been happy together. Her father was in the military and died when she was very young and her mother tries to maintain a forever-21 attitude and appearance, has a huge gambling problem and is constantly on the look-out for the next sugar daddy.

    I was willing to work with her on being more independent and she really opened up to me. But she really know how to screw with my head and heart, bringing up things to deliberately cut me down.

    I think her downfall was that her mother was so greedy for what America could offer that she forgot what makes Asians different from white-trash. She refused to do anything in the house and would only eat out and fed her kids TV dinners and told my ex that the woman holds all the power and if she wanted to keep it, she should make every man her bitch.

  31. …SHOW83…you sure she wasn’t from Shanghai…?

    I think EVERY woman I met in that city over 6 years had bunny boiler potential….crazy the lot of them…

    I think that overall the ratio of the childish spoiled brat effect in asian woman is higher in general…

  32. Its been my experience that Asian women can be just as stable, or just as psychotic as your typical White woman.

    I do not personally believe Asian women are any more/less prone to being that “crazy girlfriend” than a non-Asian. Its just that western society puts into our heads an unrealistic stereotype of Asian women, and when we see a loud, flamboyant and crazy Asian girl – we believe she is deviant.

    Asian women in America have a high suicide rate, which some psychologists believe is due to growing up in a culture that promotes White supremacy – where they begin to question their own beauty and value – especially when theypursue non-Asian mates.

    In China, however, unlike America, mental retardation/defects is not sugar coated or in many cases tolerated. Like Girls are still aborted in favor of boys, “autistic” or otherwise mentally defficient children are aborted in favor of a second attempt at a viable pregnancy. Therefore, you are less likely to see an invalid on the streets there.

  33. I’m proud to live in a country where the word “invalid” is widely held to be outdated, demeaning, dehumanizing, and has fallen into lack of use.

  34. I knew this one Cantonese girl that was completely bizarre. Her home was in New York City, but we were in graduate school elsewhere. First off she wouldn’t have sex with you unless you had a complete STD profile and showed her the results. She wouldn’t do the same. Then you had to get “check ups” every year or so. I think she had some type of maid service back at home in New York City because she wouldn’t eat anything cooked unless it was made from scratch and fresh. So for Thanksgiving dinner, you couldn’t go to the store to pick up a frozen turkey, you physically had to go to a turkey farm and have it slaughtered right there! I’m not kidding! Bread had to be made from a bread maker etc.

    Well she denied me at first because she claimed I wasn’t hot enough for her. I could understand being that blunt if she was extremely hot, but she wasn’t anything special. And her personality was even uglier. Then a few months later she tried to strike up a relationship again, but at that point I really didn’t want to have anything to do with her.

  35. I dated a Vietnamese girl some years ago who was born in the US. She is from Southern CA, and while dating her I noticed she was ashamed or embarassed to speak in Viet in front of me when talking to her family. I thought this was odd because I was interested in her language. I began to notice how she seemed to do her best to try and hide her ethnicity. The way she spoke, the crowd she hung out with, dating only white guys; I noticed a pattern. She was a great girl but I came to the conclusion that for whatever reason she was not necessarily proud to be Vietnamese.

    Later I dated a girl who had only been in the US for 3 years when I met her. She is a Filipina. We dated for over 8 months, when suddenly she told me she was still married to a Filipino man and we then broke up. I had never known she was married. A few months later, she told me they divorced and that she wanted to date me again. I agreed, and a few months later she revealed that she was still married and had not actually divorced. LOL. We’ve been broken up since, but she now only dates white guys, and still msgs me on FB, to my current gf’s dismay.

    Currently I have been dating a Vietnamese girl again for about 2.5 yrs. I kept going to the same hair salon to flirt with her until I succeeded 🙂 The odd thing about her is, after all this time, she still has yet to tell any of her friends or family, except her mom. She is too ebarassed or nervous to admit dating a white guy. She comes from a quite traditional background, and moved here when she was 11. I don’t really care, it just makes things less complicated for now.

    The point to my mini-book there is that for some reason the three asian girls I have dated have had different issues regarding the dating of another race. To a person like me, born in the US, I couldn’t care less about who is dating what. But for those not from here, or perhaps 1st generation born here, things seem to be harder for them to accept or deal with. Perhaps over time this can’t lead to other mental issues, I don’t know.

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