⚠️ Content warning: This episode includes mentions of eating disorders and depression. Please approach this carefully. If this doesn't feel right for you today, skip ahead or return when you're ready.
What happens when your culture is something you only truly discover after leaving it behind? In this episode, Asami sits down with Cait, a Filipino-Chinese undergraduate psychology student, youth mental health advocate, and owner of 11 dogs (!) each with their own personality and their own wanted-poster photo frame.
Cait moved from the Philippines to Melbourne to study psychology, carrying with her a history of depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder, none of which she disclosed when she arrived. "I had a clean slate," she says, "and it really backfired on me."
What followed was a year and a half of navigating a new country, a fragmented mental health system, and the slow, surprising discovery of who she actually was as a Filipino, something she never had to think about back home.
In this conversation with Asami, Cait opens up about the Filipino concept of kakayanin (to endure), how colonialism has shaped the way Filipinos understand mental health, why a diagnosis in the Philippines can feel more like a kryptonite than a lifeline, and what it means to fight for culturally grounded mental health research. This one is warm, funny, and deeply honest, and it's the kind of conversation that reminds you why representation in mental health spaces is a non-negotiable, not a "nice to have".
🎧 You'll hear about:
✅ Growing up Filipino-Chinese and falling short of academic expectations
✅ Depression and navigating stigmatised mental health services in the Philippines
✅ Moving to Australia and leaving your mental health history behind, and why that backfired
✅ Kakayanin: the Filipino concept of endurance and its double edge
✅ Why Filipinos telling stories through karaoke might actually be the research gap we need
👤 About the Guest
Cait is a Filipino-Chinese undergraduate psychology student in Melbourne and a passionate advocate for youth mental health, particularly within Filipino communities. As a participant in the Shapes and Sounds Student Changemakers program, Cait carries both her own lived experience with depression, anxiety, and navigating cultural stigma, and the stories of other young Filipinos she has spoken with along the way. She is deeply invested in reshaping how mental health is understood and researched across Southeast Asian contexts, and believes those conversations start over food, language, and karaoke.
🔗 Find culturally responsive practitioners on the Asian Mental Health Practitioner List
💡As a bonus, connect with Arthur De Jesus who's a Filipino clinical psychologist and the founder of AK Psychology, Melbourne's first Filipino psychology private practice
🛠️ Resources Mentioned: Find them all over on the full show notes on our blog
🙌 Connect with Shapes and Sounds
🎁 Free Resource: Download "International Students and Mental Health"
✨ If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe, rate, and review the Asian Mental Health Podcast on your favourite podcast app. It really helps other international students find these conversations. Share this episode with your friends, especially if you know, or are, a young Filipino navigating life far from home. Word of mouth is how we destigmatise mental health in Asian communities.
💛The Asian Mental Health Podcast is a production from Shapes and Sounds, made on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. This show is hosted by Asami Koike and Marcus Lai and produced by Yeo Choong. This season is brought to you by Embrace Multicultural Mental Health (The Embrace Project). All thoughts and ideas you hear are independently ours and our guests.The Embrace Project is part of Mental Health Australia. For more information about the Embrace Project, visit: https://embracementalhealth.org.au/
