CNN featured Sahaj Kohli, founder of Brown Girl Therapy who earned a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling, in the article “What children of immigrants can teach everyone about mental health,’’ by Upasna Gautam.
CNN — Sahaj Kohli, whose family immigrated to the United Kingdom from India, struggled with an identity crisis familiar to many children of immigrants.
As the first in her family to marry a non-Indian, the first to go to therapy and the first to start talking openly about mental health, she found herself needing an outlet to share her challenges. In 2019, she founded Brown Girl Therapy, an online mental health community for children of immigrants in the West, to marry her two passions of mental health advocacy and narrative storytelling.
Wherever their parents were born, children of immigrants are often straddling two cultures. They are being raised with values inside the home that can be different from those they are experiencing outside of it.
Immigrant parents still teach their children in the ways of their home country, often rooted in deferring to elders. That’s why children of immigrants can struggle with chronic guilt, noted Kohli, who earned a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling from The George Washington University in Washington, DC.