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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What happens when the person telling everyone else’s story is quietly carrying infertility, burnout, anti-Asian racism, and becoming a first-time mom at the same time? Dion Lim reveals the private cost of being the public face of Asian American truth-telling—and why vulnerability, not perfection, is what finally opened doors.

Peggy and Jasmine sit down with three-time Emmy Award-winning journalist and author Dion Lim for a conversation that moves from identity and motherhood to the emotional toll of reporting on anti-Asian hate during the pandemic. Dion shares how growing up as the daughter of immigrants in overwhelmingly white communities shaped her voice, why speaking about her own pain helped others trust her, and how a breakdown on live television became an unexpected turning point in her career.

You’ll hear Dion break down:

• Why shared experience is the key to getting communities to open up
• The pressure of becoming “the” voice for AAPI stories during a global crisis
• What it was like to go through IVF while covering violent anti-Asian attacks and working on camera
• Why therapy finally worked when she found the right culturally aware therapist
• How motherhood shifted her from chasing airtime to chasing impact
• The body-image pressure, postpartum scrutiny, and “bounce back” expectations that followed her into public life

Dion also gets candid about the mental-health impact of carrying generational trauma, the loneliness of infertility, and the small but powerful practices that help her stay grounded now, including intentionality, joy, and setting her own pace. She explains why storytelling can change policy, how one of her reports helped influence hate-crime legislation, and why her new role gives her the freedom to do meaningful work on her own terms.

This episode is essential listening if you’ve ever felt alone in motherhood, fertility treatment, cultural pressure, or burnout. It’s a reminder that healing often starts when someone is brave enough to say, “Me too.”

More about Dion:

Dion Lim is a three-time Emmy Award-winning TV journalist and author of Amplify: My Fight for Asian America. Some of her reporting has been featured on Good Morning America, 20/20 Nightline, ABC News Live. Her work has also been highlighted by PBS, NPR, USA Today and more. Now she is the chief strategist for Asian American voices and founder of Dion Lim Media.

Dion was named to the Gold House A100 alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, and was invited by the Biden administration to the first AAPI Heritage Month celebration at the White House. She is a Dress for Success San Francisco honoree, and has received multiple commendations from the California State Assembly and the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office for AAPI and LGBTQ+ advocacy. Peninsula leaders also proclaimed July 31 as Dion Lim Day in San Mateo County.

Find more of Dion:

Website: DionLim.com
Instagram: @dionlimtv

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✨ If you'd like to subscribe to our podcast for access to more bonus episodes, please click here for Buzzsprout Subscriptions! Once subscribed, you can use an RSS feed to listen from any of your podcast platforms. Thanks in advance for your support, as this really helps us keep the show going! ❤️ (Think of it like buying us a boba...to share! 😉🧋)

[This is a sneak peek version, but you can SUBSCRIBE TODAY for the full episode #5 at healingthetigress.buzzsprout.com!]

Last year, we read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and we've been having a lot of discussion between the two of us since finishing the book. Because we are so invested in mental health topics, the topic of our children’s mental health is naturally really important to us too. This book talked about "How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness" by "overprotecting our kids in the real world and under-protecting them online."

So in this episode, we wanted to discuss some of the things we’ve learned but also talk about some of the things we’ve done or plan to do with our kids surrounding the topics of using smart phones/screens and social media. If you haven't read the book yet, that's okay! In fact, we know the thought of reading it might be even more anxiety-inducing. We experienced it ourselves, and maybe this episode can ease you into some of the topics.

But as we talk about in the episode, it's also not all doom and gloom. In fact, arming ourselves with the knowledge now can further empower us to change the narrative for our kids before they hit their middle or high school years. And if you are already at that stage, it's also never too late either.

We also know that a big part of the discussion around smart phone and social media use is our own screen time use and that sometimes modeling that can be the biggest hurdle and challenge. There is no one size fits all, but we do think it is important to have the conversations with our community because this is not an individual problem to solve. We need community effort to battle it so none of our kids feel left out and hence causing parents to cave in.

So we invite you to listen to our more personal takes on what we've learned and what we're hoping we can implement with our kids so that they can have a good hold and control on their own mental wellbeing without being controlled by their devices.

We talk about:

• What our relationship was like with screens like in our youth
• How that relationship with screens changed when we became adults
• How screen time and our thoughts about it has evolve over time from having babies to toddlers to school-aged kids
• What we're working on or have worked on since reading The Anxious Generation
• How we're working with our community and people around us to help our kids
• The importance of real world experiences and less overprotecting in the real world and more vigilance in the online world

This episode isn’t to judge or preach on what we think anyone should be doing because all families and needs are different, but we invite you to listen with an open mind and continue the ever evolving conversation with people around you too! Hope it sparks some good conversation!

Resources mentioned:

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

Look Up and Around! by Christine Chiu, LMFT

Send us your thoughts!

Send us your thoughts!

Support the show

✨ If you'd like to subscribe to our podcast for access to more bonus episodes, please click here for Buzzsprout Subscriptions! Once subscribed, you can use an RSS feed to listen from any of your podcast platforms. Thanks in advance for your support, as this really helps us keep the show going! ❤️ (Think of it like buying us a boba...to share! 😉🧋)