Dr. Theresa Nguyen, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and researcher of almost 20 yeras, joins Healing the Tigress to discuss why Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities have been underrepresented in perinatal mental health research and how that gap can affect care for mothers and families. Drawing on her Vietnamese American background and her work in women’s and perinatal mental health, Dr. Nguyen shares how her personal experiences, structural inequities, and gaps in data shaped her research.

Dr. Nguyen also gets personal with us about her own decision to be child-free by choice due to her own mental health struggles with anxiety and depression. We talk about how she has found the calm in day-to-day life and how EMDR therapy played a role.

Our conversation also looks at how the model minority myth can obscure mental health needs, why treating all Asian Americans as one group can hide important differences, and what research has found about depression, anxiety, and thoughts of self-harm across pregnancy and postpartum. This is one of the reasons why data disaggregation amongst AAPI is so important and why her research always aims to do this with the data. Dr. Nguyen also discusses stigma, language and follow-up barriers, and why postpartum experiences may be harder to capture in research.

The episode includes practical ways to improve support: building a more representative behavioral health workforce, practicing cultural humility, asking about suicide risk routinely, and using safety planning to help people navigate moments of crisis.

More about Theresa:

Dr. Theresa Nguyen is a second generation Vietnamese American Associate Professor in the Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science at the University of San Diego and a psychiatric–mental health nurse practitioner since 2007. She has dedicated her career to women's and perinatal mental health across academic medical centers, community organizations, and private practice.

Dr. Nguyen's research centers on advancing health equity for Asian American communities by focusing on data disaggregation and overcoming structural barriers to care, an impact recognized globally through honors such as her selection as a featured Junior Investigator at the 2025 Marcé of North America Biennial Conference. Alongside her clinical and equity work, she actively contributes to health policy research and promotes inclusive excellence to strengthen the nursing workforce and health professions education.

Find more of Theresa:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theresanguyenphdpmhnp

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