Reflections from our May Community of Practice session 🤓

At Shapes and Sounds we acknowledge the important role that  accessing up-to-date scientific evidence plays in the delivery of evidence-based mental health care. As such, we bring together Asian mental health practitioners each quarter in our Community of Practice (formerly Connect and Grow) - a professional development program where we collaboratively reflect and discuss the practical relevance of recent literature surrounding the mental health of Asian populations within Australia.

What did we discuss in our session?

Our May session welcomed our partners from Monash University - the Culture, Trauma and Mental Health research group, who shared their article titled: Exploring the associations between social support and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder among Malaysian and Australian trauma survivors (Jobson et al., 2023). This article explored how culture may influence the types of social support one seeks, and also the potential differences in benefits / risks gained from these different types of social support. 

Some of the different types of social support included: 

• Mutual vs Non-mutual support: i.e., whether the person who the individual is seeking support from is someone they have previously supported. 
  • For example: Mutual support might look like asking for help from a friend who has previously consoled you when you felt down, whereas non-mutual support might look like asking for help from someone from your sports club (who you do not know very well and have not previously helped before)
• Explicit vs Implicit support: i.e., whether the support entails explicitly talking about the traumatic event, or if it is just to enjoy the company of another person. 
  • For example: Explicit support might involve catching up with a friend to discuss a traumatic incident, whereas implicit support might be going to the movies and having a meal with friends, and not speaking directly about your traumas 
• Resource: i.e., whether the social support was provided by family members, a significant other, or friends. 

Two key findings from their article were:

• That Australian individuals reported less PTSD symptoms when seeking explicit social support, meaning that talking to another person about their trauma was more helpful for Australians than Malaysians.
•  That Malaysian individuals reported more distress after seeking non mutual social support, meaning that asking for help from someone who they had previously not helped was more stressful for Malaysians than Australians. 

Malaysian individuals also reported seeking more implicit support than Australian individuals. 

Key discussion themes 

When discussing the study's themes and findings, practitioners reflected upon their own experiences with social support and how these may show up in therapy. Key themes included:

• Despite implicit social support potentially being more strongly endorsed by individuals of a stronger interdependent self construal (e.g., Malaysians), and explicit social support being more strongly endorsed by those of an independent self construal (e.g., Australians), the need for either variation of support can still change depending on the context, social environment or even life stage.
  • For example, practitioners reflected upon desiring explicit social support from their families or parents whilst growing up in an Asian family environment which they reported, often provided greater implicit support. However, many reflected that they are now (in adulthood) growing to both recognise and appreciate the implicit social support they may have received when young.
• When asked to consider why implicit support may potentially be more strongly favoured by those of an interdependent self construal (i.e., many Asian cultures that emphasise collective wellbeing over their own), practitioners reflected upon how a lack of language/resources for communicating explicit support (e.g., saying “I love you”) within interdependent societies may lend individuals to be aware of the potential discomfort that asking for explicit support may cause to the help provider.
• Additionally, practitioners also reflected upon how the provision of explicit support to another individual may be (re)traumatising to the help provider if they themselves lack the capacity/language to process previous traumas, as is often the case of Asian individuals who grew in households that may have only enacted implicit support. For example, Asian individuals may predominantly have only received care via concerns like "have you eaten?" or  "do you have enough money?"

Practitioner reflections and implications for practice 

• Practitioners reflected on how they could utilise existing clinical tools to further explore cultural nuances. For example, whilst there are currently tools used to prompt clients into reflecting about their values (e.g., those stemming from Russ Harris / ACT), practitioners can take these one step further and prompt clients to reflect upon the values of those around them too (e.g., family), and consider how these may converge and diverge. This may be particularly important if the individual strongly endorses an interdependent self construal, as their wellbeing becomes heavily intertwined with their social environment. 
  • Building on this, practitioners also highlighted the importance of understanding social norms and values at all levels of a client's ecological system (self, immediate environment, connections between environments, indirect environments etc.)
• Practitioners again mentioned the importance of reflexivity, especially surrounding clients who may bring up similar traumatic experiences to those they personally experienced. Understanding the forms of social support which the client themselves prefer is key, hence practitioners should be aware of a) how current literature about what 'ideal' social support looks like may be heavily Eurocentric, and b) how personal definitions of social support, even as an Asian therapist, may differ to that from an Asian client of a similar cultural background. 
• Practitioners also reflected upon how therapy itself presents as a form of explicit support. We considered the question, what does it mean to be an Asian therapist, who may have grown up immersed in implicit social support structures, to then now be providing such explicit forms of support through means such as talk based therapy. Furthermore, when considering the people that we work with, we also questioned what the implications of this report’s findings may be for individuals who do not prefer, or even find discomfort, in seeking explicit social support.

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Shapes and Sounds is home to the largest Community of Practice for Asian mental health professionals in Australia and we meet quarterly to discuss papers as summarised above. You can learn more about our Community of Practice here.

Alternatively, if you're interested in connecting with Shapes and Sounds through our cultural-competency trainings, you can learn more about our trainings here.