Dozens of AAJA-LA chapter members and community partners came together Saturday, Jan. 31, at Cal State Long Beach to talk about suicide prevention and reducing stigma about mental illness in the AANHPI community.

The symposium, co-sponsored by AAJA-LA, focused on expanding mental health access for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander youth and featured ways journalists can cover the topic with compassion while backing up their stories with data. Suicide is the leading cause of death for AANHPI youth, said Mary Ann Foo, a founder of the community group OCAPICA, another of the event’s sponsors.

Panelists discussed their experiences with mental health challenges and shared their stories of survival. Featured speakers also included social workers and healthcare professionals. Attendees learned about covering mental illness with empathy and how to connect their audiences with experts and resources.

A big takeaway from the event was taking care to be sensitive with language. As one example, panelist Michelle Carrillo, founder of the nonprofit Arielle’s Light, emphasized that journalists should not say a person “committed suicide” because it makes it sound like a deliberate act and not that the person had an illness. Instead, she advised journalists to say a person “died by suicide.” Carrillo, whose own daughter Arielle died by suicide at age 21 in 2024, also said journalists should not sensationalize the manner of death and should try to focus on the life the person lived instead.

Cayla Zhang, a community resources coordinator with OCAPICA, also advised journalists to avoid pointing fingers at a person’s heritage or their parents when covering stories of suicide. “Culture is our strength, our resource, our resilience,” she said.

Organizers shared this online resource for journalists to use when reporting on suicide.

The event, which also featured a gallery of photographs taken by Vietnamese American youth as part of a therapeutic exercise, was made possible through the hard work of AAJA-LA board members Teresa Watanabe and Sona Patel.

Thanks to all of our sponsors and partners who supported the symposium: OCAPICA, Little Tokyo Service Center, UCI Wen Public Health, CSULB Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, CSULB Department of Journalism & Public Relations, AANAPISI Project Resilience, AANHPI Student Achievement Program and the AAJA @ CSULB Student Chapter.

The California Endowment, CSULB AANHPI Student Achievement Program and Center for Wellness and Nutrition, a program of the Public Health Institute, with support from the California Department of Public Health, also provided generous support.

— Rubaina Azhar and Maneeza Iqbal