About Us

What we are founded on

Our Story

In 2021, during their freshman year of college, our founders suffered the loss of their close friend and roommate in a tragic murder-suicide where he took the lives of himself and his family.

Their roommate was struggling with a variety of inadequately treated mental illnesses. However, like so many members of the South Asian-American community, his parents simply lacked the tools, resources, and education necessary for providing him the care he needed.

The tragedy of their roommate and his family revealed that there are many environmental factors and structural barriers to effective mental health care unique to South Asians. Fueled with heartache and a passion for change, they went on to create a youth-led grass-roots initiative that enables South Asians struggling with mental illness to lead better and healthful lives.

Goals

Adverse mental health outcomes amongst South Asian-Americans are mostly rooted in a singular, overarching problem: South Asian-American communities and the mental healthcare system are NOT effectively integrated. The actionable problems that result from this include:

There is not enough academic literature on South Asian American mental health
The South Asian-American community lacks guidance on conducting healthy dialogue on mental health
Current resources do not address unique risk factors in the South Asian community.

Research

Researching attitudes and barriers to mental health care through a South Asian lens

Community Engagement

Engage communities through a guided framework to encourage healthier dialogue on mental health

Development

Developing novel resources that reduce friction between mental healthcare and our community.

Community Empowerment

Not only do we aim to empower the South Asian community, as an organization, we also prioritize the empowerment of our team.

Our work is entirely student-led. MHISA was created as a vessel to empower passionate students across the nation to address the issues that they too see in their communities- and conduct novel work in the mental health sphere.

Currently, our team consists of an incredible group of highly motivated students at both the UT Austin and UT Dallas who all work collaboratively on outreach, resource development, and research. If you would like to bring MHISA to your university, please reach out!