The government released news statistics about suicide in the US and the results were sobering and stunning. Suicide is a growing concern worldwide and one group that often endures their struggles in silence is the expat community. Picture yourself as an expat wrestling with depression living in a tropical paradise. You seem to have everything going for you, you're living a life of ecstasy and you are aware that many others are facing much worse circumstances. So instead of seeking help regarding your feelings, you may naturally choose to keep these feelings hidden. To tell you the truth, some expats feel a sense of guilt for their struggles. This guilt can create a barrier for discussing their mental health as they believe that they have no right to feel unhappy when they are living a life many others would envy. And then the moment I arrived in the Philippines, I started to struggle with anxiety, with negative thoughts, and then you add the fact that I was planning to buy a motorbike and it didn't go through so all my plans were crumbling and that also affected my mental health. So what's causing this? Well I have two answers, a family friendly version and my direct answer. The family friendly version is that the culture shock, language barrier and also difficulty adapting to a new social environment can strengthen feelings of isolation, depression and loneliness. From speaking to expats, it's clear that the absence of support networks such as close friends and family members also make it more challenging to cope with depression when living in Southeast Asia. However, my direct answer is that life is so unbalanced for some expats, it's frankly understandable why they feel this way. I came across a story last week at my local meetup group, George's farm the US and he lives in both Manila and Bangkok. He was telling me a story of his closest friend who lived in Bangkok and to cut a long story short his friend met a Thai girl who worked in a bar. He gave her most of his money and she went off with another guy so he was broke, he was too old to work, his retirement fund was finished and so he couldn't bear it any longer and he took his own life. It's very sad to hear but strangely enough this is a situation that I've heard again and again and again. When George told me this story I thought to myself, well yeah, you know the first mistake here is falling for a bar girl but the reality is this is not only women who work in a bar. You could swap the bar girl with a local scam and addiction or something similar and the outcome unfortunately could end up being the same. And so many of you come back damaged and relationships fall apart and from the debris of that and in normal circumstances a divorce separation being apart from your children can be devastating and life changing. So please don't run away from your own issues back home thinking that you can transfer your life here to the Philippines and everything will be dandy because I can assure you it won't do. Life in Southeast Asia in many ways mirrors life in the West. If you find yourself going out continuously meeting new romantic partners regularly going out drinking or not connecting with others then your energy and your well-being will suffer as a result. When this occurs you may be prone to making poorer choices leading to a vicious cycle of self-destructive behaviour. The cycle is different for everybody but the first stage is that you start to feel depressed or you feel empty. To get rid of these feelings you start to crave and this could be something such as women, it could be beer, there's many many different things that you could start to crave. Then you start to use these vices to get rid of the negative feelings that you feel and after time you get attached to these vices so the vices get stronger. These vices then bring you feelings of depression and emptiness and so finally the cycle starts again. Now of course it goes without saying but I'm going to say it anyways that it's not your fault if you feel like this, if you're feeling like crap it's not your fault, it doesn't make you weak or any of that garbage but you have to understand that there are things that make it worse. And if you are feeling depressed or you're feeling trapped in the cycle you may need to go against what you feel like doing in order to reach a positive outcome. This could be speaking to a professional reaching out to others or completely changing your foundational identity. If you are feeling depressed as an expat you are stuck at the eye of the storm and it's hard to see a way out and you might feel that you are done, you have no options but there is always support out there if you feel like you need it and us expats we all go through the same kinds of problems we all face the same kinds of different experiences but the same kind of hurdles so we must help each other overcome any difficulties that we face. In addition I'm going to be launching a one to one private service next week to talk about anything you want to talk about. This can be visas, dating or even this topic of mental health. This service is through emails or phone calls so feel free to email high at alavasia.org if you are interested.