South Asian Mental Health, Out Loud

What happens when two South Asian therapists decide that therapy’s four walls aren’t big enough for the conversations our community needs? We built Desi Couch to take healing into the open. In our first recording, we share the immigration paths that shaped us, and the moment we realized that silence—not a lack of suffering—keeps many South Asian families from care.

We dig into what we saw in clinics and group practices: rosters labeled “diverse,” yet often no Indian or South Asian clients. That absence sent us into the community with talks on depression and suicide, and it pushed us toward the mic. We unpack the barriers—shame, confidentiality fears, cost, language, immigration stress—that keep people away, and we talk through a wake-up call around proposing a support group for parents of children who survived sexual abuse. The pain is present; the words are missing. So we start giving language to hard things, without blame.

Our conversation also traces the quieter currents of history. Partition memories show up as stories told in passing and rules about keeping feelings tidy. We look at family systems where one person gets labeled “the problem,” even when their symptoms point to a deeper wound. Throughout, we hold two truths at once: joy and grief, gratitude and longing. That both/and approach becomes a tool for self-compassion and a lens for cultural nuance.

Expect plain speech, cultural fluency, and a safe, non-shaming space. Most of all, we want you with us: listening, questioning, and widening the circle. If you’re South Asian or love someone who is, you’ll find language for what hurts and what heals—and you’ll hear why we believe community is part of the cure.

If this resonates, subscribe, share Desi Couch with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the conversation. Tell us: what silence should we break next?

Thanks for listening! we would love to hear from you, write to us, 

Your hosts, 

Malika & Gitika 

Malika is the Founder of Ik Aas Counseling, know more at https://malikabains.com/ 

Gitika is the Founder of Pranh Healing & Wellness, know more at https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Transcript

Meet Gitika And Malika

Gitika 0:05

Hi Malika. Hello, Gitika. Welcome to Daisy Couch. We finally are, really. I'm so glad. So yes, everybody, welcome to our podcast. Um, my name is Gitika, and uh this is my friend and sister.

Immigration Journeys And Licensure

Gitika 0:28

We are both mental health professionals in the so-called United States, and we both were born and raised in India, and we migrated to the United States at different times. Malika, do you want to share a little bit about yourself?

Malika 0:44

And here we are. Um Kindakas, born and brought up in India, uh, immigrated to the United States. My immigration began in 2010, and then I finally started living in the United States, 2015 onwards. Before then, I was just kind of going back and forth, visiting and whatnot. But 2015 is when I started living here, and that's been an experience, just to the least say, it's been an experience living here. But apart from that history, I'm a mental health professional, professional licensed mental health counselor in the state of Washington, been a therapist since 2017. It's gonna be kind of like reaching my decade of being a therapist, and happy to say that I'm still enjoying it. I still like it, and I still want to continue being a therapist. Amazing. Amazing.

Gitika 1:46

My immigration to the United States began in 2007. I came to the US as an international student to pursue my PhD in Baltimore. And after I earned my PhD, I started practicing in the state of Washington, and then I gradually got licensed. And I've been a licensed psychologist in the US since 2015, but I had worked as a mental health professional in India before

Why Start A South Asian Podcast

Gitika 2:14

moving to the US. So I can never decide when to start the clock on my career because I've had these stops and starts. So in the US, I've been licensed since 2015. But I think I've been serving as a mental health professional for a lot longer than that. And uh yeah, Malika and I met in the course of connecting with other South Asian mental health professionals in Washington State. And this podcast is I think three years in the making.

Malika 2:48

Three years in the making. And it's like we have our own individual journeys with the making of this podcast. Like you have had it in your bubble that okay, you would like to do one, and I have it in my bubble that okay, I would like to do one. And finally the stars aligned, and we're like, Oh, you want to do podcasts? I want to do podcasts, let's do it together, and it worked out because it's been so hard to just find someone that the timelines align with that person, and you know, the phases of life align, then you can finally do it. It's difficult to get it started, yeah, for sure.

Gitika 3:27

But what inspired you to do a podcast?

Malika 3:34

I think for me, it was just the fact that I wanted to connect more with the South Asian community in regards to mental health topics, and that was one of the reasons I even started my private practice because the job that I worked at, and then the clients that I had, even though it was diverse in their diagnosis, age, racial background, but I didn't see even a single Indian, a South Asian, total

Limits Of Therapy And Wider Reach

Malika 4:06

Indian be South Asian client, and I didn't see. And I had been working at that place for two and a half, three years, and I hadn't seen any Indian client. And I was like, I know, I know my community is going through something, and I know it's not that there's no existence of mental health dysfunction in the community. I know it's there, but like, how come I'm not meeting anyone? And that's where the idea, like, okay, you know what? Let's just do it, let's just get in the community, start the private practice. So I got my foot in, did it, met a lot of finally, you know, South Asian clients, South Asian therapists. But then it's like me understanding that there's a limit to how much I can do as a therapist as well, right? There's only so many sessions we can do in a week, so many clients we can see in a week, and just that realization that there is a lot of us out there in the world who needs this information, who have the right to this information, and therapy should not just be the only space where they can get access to any information related to healing, mental health, their own selves. So that's where the I Give podcast began. I'm like, what if? Let's just do it, you know, let's just put it online, talk about our community, the family dynamics, and how it affects us, and see if that relates to people. Yeah. And then that's where I started thinking about the prospects, but then it didn't really got into fruition. I was like, okay, fine, like no podcast, let me just start with community events. So I did a couple of that because it was harder to get the podcast started, but local community events, get the word out what's depression, suicide rates, and whatnot, did a couple of those events. I'm still going. And then I think there's just one time that I really starkly remembered in my brain where I was like, I need to do something

Community Events And A Wake-Up Call

Malika 6:06

about this. I was working in a group practice where there were conversations happening around we should maybe offer a group for the parents whose children have gone through sexual abuse. Great idea, but it hit me pretty hard because I realized my community, the parents are not even aware that the kids could be, their own kids could be going through sexual abuse. Even if they are aware, they don't want to talk about it, let alone enroll in a group where they're supposed to sit in intimate setting, talk to another stranger about how the similarity between them is the fact that their child got sexually abused. And I think that just hit me really, really hard where it hurt me to see, like, damn, like my community is behind at no fault of theirs. There's like so many things that they have to keep dealing with, being it the immigration coming from a leaving one country, moving to another. It's like they're starting again from scratch, again and again. They haven't been able to get to the point where they could actually prioritize emotional healing. Yeah. So that just really shook me. And I was like, okay, I need to like focus more on how do I increase and spread the impact of whatever knowledge I've gained over the years through studying experience. I need to find a way to get this out. Yeah. Absolutely.

Gitika 7:42

I think what I'm also hearing in what you're sharing is that constant sense that South Asian mental health is so complicated by our histories, the amount of diversity in the South Asian community, and we are not using South Asian as code for Indian. We really mean like everything that's considered South Asia,

Silence, Shame, And Family Pain

Gitika 8:06

and not from UN definition of South Asia, because that definition doesn't include all the countries in the South Asian identity, so to speak. So and so much we've gone through, and somehow our community has this tendency to silently bear things. Yes. And you know, like we have to keep moving forward, but uh it's hard when your foundations feel like they have been hurt by something, but you don't know how to talk about it. Yeah, you feel the pain, but you don't have the language for it, right? And I think that comes up so many ways. I think the pain that we carry into our lives as immigrants, yeah, there is pain that was there before, exactly, and now there is pain from pain and joy too. Like, I'm not saying immigration is only pain, obviously, there is a lot of joy as well. Right. There is almost this emphasis on uh focus on the good things, focus on the good things, and is there room to focus on both things? Can be true, you know. There are rose and there are thorns, yeah. And how do we speak in whole wholesome ways about all of it? Yeah, we can actually heal things, pretending that uh something didn't happen or we can't talk about it, keep pushing things into shame, and it's like the feeling you're being ungrateful if you're not if you're acknowledging pain, then you're being ungrateful for what you have today as an immigrant, right?

Partition Memory And Mixed Emotions

Gitika 10:01

Right, and I think I'm also a third-generation survivor of the partition of what is now called India and Pakistan, and my forefathers came from the land that is on the border of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, they were from the northwest frontier province. So, when I identify as a South Asian, part of it is also identifying with really my lineage, you know, my ancestry is from not the borders that were defined by our colonizers, no?

Malika 10:33

Yeah, yeah.

Gitika 10:34

A lot of times when our partition stories would come up, they would come up very randomly. Like, oh, you know, this happened, oh yeah, you know, in our old house we used to have this, and then you know, and again, like these stories are coming up, and then the stories are gone. So I think now, especially with more and more conversations about the impact of partition and how the impact of partition stays in our life, even as immigrants. Like I sometimes would tell my father about like, oh god, you know, I really uh miss uh India or something, he would say, but oh, but you know, we come from a family that survived partition, of course. Now you can like live in this new country. Why do you have to miss home? And I was like, it's not about like the US is yes, and I can miss India too, like you know, both things can be true, but I think it's these small ways in which our histories come up, but when the history is also covered with shame, like you're talking about sexual abuse, how does one talk about the impact of sexual abuse on an entire family when that's shrouded in shrimp shame? And how he's talking about hey, how come sexual abuse is born out of suffering? Also, how do you understand what a community has gone through unless we are talking about the ways in which that suffering shows up in our children

Naming Suffering Without Blame

Gitika 12:06

often, and or like you know, in therapy terms, we sometimes talk about in family therapy terms there's the scapegoat, there's the identified patient, the person who seems to have all the problems, but and I'm saying problems in a sarcastic way. I think suffering needs to be acknowledged as suffering when it's called a problem and then people try to throw it out. But the person who has the concerns is showing the most prominent suffering, is usually the person who's feeling the suffering of the entire family and showing it, right?

Malika 12:37

Exactly, right? That makes so much sense, and like that's where the the shame and the hiding and the blame comes in that you can't really show this out to the others because or people are gonna then know. So you are doing something wrong by showcasing how the family is going through what they're going through. You also need to stop, you don't need to show, just be okay, yes, feel it, definitely, even if you feel it.

Gitika 13:05

And somewhere I, if I'm not wrong, I sense they see couch, and I'm I'm saying this hesitantly because I think Malika and I, as we are having this conversation, I'm realizing like we've actually never explicitly said this, but I sense we both feel this. This podcast is about taking our pain and our joy into the open, yeah, you know, like things that they tell you like what's at home should belong in the house, don't tell other people. Lokya kahinge, what will people say? You're supposed to keep secrets, and that secret is actually also fame. And I think we are breaking the silence on that, and we are saying, hey, can we talk about this? Can we talk about how much love we have for our community? And can we also acknowledge how much pain there is in our community? And can we actually talk about this? And can this podcast

Breaking Secrecy And Building Safety

Gitika 14:05

be about, hey, let's talk about this? Yes, community talking about just stigma of mental health, borrowing topics.

Malika 14:13

I know, same. Can we just talk about the community without shaming the community? Can we just acknowledge that we all are going through this? No one's better or worse. Like we are all collectively, we have gone through this, and it's okay for us, you and I, to acknowledge our shortcomings, our shame as well, and not just something that others are going through. No, we all are going through together, and I think this is where we come and sit on our Daisy couch and just be vulnerable and discuss how things have unfolded in the family system, in the countries, in the societal level, interpersonal and intrapersonal level, and local has it shown up, and what have we done to try and contain it or resolve it, heal it, whatever, and what is something that we all can do? Yeah, create a more safe space for all of us, absolutely, absolutely.

Join Us And Stay In Relationship

Gitika 15:23

So, yeah, and this podcast and this episode is the beginning of this conversation, and you know, we hope you'll all join us in this conversation. Listen, write in if you have helpful suggestions. Please send them along. Please treat every letter as uh please remember Malika and I are humans, yeah, and we are going to continue to do our best to be open, honest, self-reflective. There will be things we'll miss, but please treat us as one of you. We are in this together. So if you uh have suggestions, uh constructive feedback, we welcome it. And more than anything, please stay in relationship, listen to these episodes, follow along, subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen.

Malika 16:23

And uh yeah, join us. This is yeah, this is a place where we're gonna sprinkle a lot of different things, definitely relational. We may sprinkle in some Hindi Punjabi words, but then we will translate, of course. Yeah, and keep the communication up and as Kitaka said, yes, please, please write to us because we would love to make sure that we're connected to all of you as we guess.

Gitika 16:52

Yes, absolutely. So that's it from us for today. But uh, we hope to keep seeing you at least once every week. So thanks everyone for listening. This is Gitika and Malika signing off. We did it. We did it. Okay I need to stop recording. How do I stop recording? Awesome.