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Mental illness is a familiar topic to most teenagers, whether from personal experience with anxiety and depression or because they’ve watched a loved one’s struggle. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, approximately one in five adolescents has a diagnosable mental disorder.

The numbers are even worse for immigrant communities: Studies show that Asian American college students are more likely than White American students to have suicidal thoughts and to attempt suicide, but are three times less likely to seek mental health services.

So let’s talk mental health, in general and in the Asian American community, with I W Gregorio, Randy Ribay (Patron Saint of Nothing), Misa Sugiura (This Time Will Be Different), Kelly Loy Gilbert (Picture Us in the Light) and Abigail Hing Wen (Loveboat, Taipei).

I.W.. Gregorio is a practicing surgeon by day, masked avenging YA writer by night. After getting her MD at Yale School of Medicine, she did her residency at Stanford, where she met the intersex patient who inspired her debut novel, None of the Above, which is a Lambda Literary Award finalist, a Publishers Weekly Flying Start, a ABC Children's Group Best Book for Young Readers, and an American Library Association Rainbow List selection. She is proud to be a board member of interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, and is a founding member of We Need Diverse Books. Her new book, This is My Brain in Love is a stunning YA contemporary romance about a Chinese girl and a mixed-race Nigerian boy navigating friendship and romance through the lens of intersectional mental illness. The novel has already garnered a starred review from Publishers Weekly and been described by bestselling and award-winning author Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak and SHOUT) as “Absolute perfection.”

Don’t miss this timely and important conversation.