Behind the Success Story- Mental Health and the Indian-Australian Migration Experience

For many Indian Australians, migration is told through achievement. Degrees, careers, homes, stability and sacrifice. Behind that success story runs another conversation many families still find hard to have out loud, the emotional cost of starting again.

Australia’s Indian-born population has grown fast. According to the Department of Home Affairs, 916,300 Indian-born people were living in Australia at the end of June 2024, the country’s second-largest migrant community after people born in the United Kingdom.

That growth carries ambition, separation, pressure, identity and belonging. For many first-generation Indian Australians, daily life means moving between two cultural worlds while trying to meet expectations in both.

Migration is rarely a solo act. Parents leave familiar cities, languages, relatives and careers to build a safer or more prosperous life. Children grow up knowing their success is tied to those sacrifices. That can drive them. It can also sit heavy.

Arshdeep Cheema, who moved from India to Australia at the age of two, has described the pressure of growing up under high expectations from parents and the wider community. She was expected to perform academically, take part in many activities and meet standards that could feel overwhelming.

Cheema later lived with anxiety and an eating disorder. Now a public health student, she has called for better mental health support for migrant youth, especially those held back by stigma or unsure how to find help. Her story is not offered as universal. It is one example of a wider pattern, where achievement can hide distress.

In many Indian households, education and career stability are treated as the road to security. The pressure turns harmful when young people feel they cannot fail, rest or choose a different path.

It can show up in career choices made to avoid disappointing family, a reluctance to talk about mental health, a fear of seeming ungrateful, or pushing through distress because struggle is treated as normal. It can also surface in small comments, comparisons, questions about marks, or assumptions about what a “good” career should look like.

Mental health conversations in Indian communities are shifting, but stigma is still a real barrier. A 2012 study by Rajesh Maheshwari and Zachary Steel, published in Australasian Psychiatry and indexed in PubMed, found that 15 per cent of participants reported high to very high psychological distress, while 91 per cent of participants with identifiable mental health needs had not sought a mental health consultation.

That study should be read with care. It drew on 71 Indian-Australian family groups in Sydney, so it is not a current national figure for all Indian Australians. Even so, it points to something many families and young people recognise. Distress can be present even when nobody is asking for help.

This is why culturally aware support matters. Mental health care is not only about language. It is about whether a person feels understood when they talk about family duty, migration stress, shame, gender expectations, religious belief, marriage pressure, or the fear of letting their parents down.

Migration can be hardest during pregnancy and early parenthood. In many Indian families, new parents would traditionally lean on parents, in-laws, aunties, neighbours or family friends. In Australia, many new migrants go through that stage with none of that support close by.

A Mental Health Professionals’ Network case study offers a de-identified training vignette about “Rishika”, a 26-year-old woman who migrated from India to Australia. It describes her as isolated, newly pregnant soon after arrival, and later caring for a baby without close family support. It also notes worrying signs, including physical distress and a bruise she quickly covers.

Because it is a training scenario, it is not a reported profile of a real person. Its value is what it helps explain. Migration, parenthood, isolation and possible family violence can overlap in ways that make asking for help harder.

A 2025 qualitative study on Indian immigrants to Australia, published by Sage and indexed on PubMed, looked at immigration and parenthood in the perinatal period. It described the experience as living between two worlds, with participants working through belonging, confidence, cultural expectations and the demands of raising a child in a new country.

Indian international students are part of this too. Many arrive with family hopes riding on them. Some carry student loans, work while they study, send money to relatives back home and shoulder the pressure of proving the move to Australia was worth it.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, international students in Australia faced financial, housing, employment and emotional stress. The Australia India Institute’s 2022 review of international student needs noted support measures for students in hardship, including in Victoria, where many Indian students were based.

For many students, the hard part is sounding strong on calls home while managing real uncertainty in Australia. That split can be exhausting.

For first-generation Indian Australians, belonging gets complicated. Some feel deeply Indian at home but out of place in Australia. Others feel changed after years here, then go back to India and find they no longer fit there either.

That can breed a quiet loneliness. Festivals without extended family. Big life events with relatives overseas. Workplaces where the cultural references land flat. Belonging is not only about being accepted by others. It is about holding several parts of yourself at once without feeling split.

What real strength can look like

For many Indian families, strength has long meant endurance. Work hard. Stay quiet. Keep going. Do not bring shame. Do not burden others.

Younger Indian Australians are pushing back on that idea. They talk about therapy, burnout, anxiety, grief, eating disorders, parenting stress and family pressure in ways earlier generations often had no language for.

Widening Indian values is not the same as rejecting them. Family duty can share space with emotional honesty, and respect for parents with personal boundaries. Cultural pride and professional mental health support are not at odds. Faith and prayer can sit beside counselling, medical care and community services.

Real strength does not always look like silence. Sometimes it looks like naming what hurts before it grows too heavy to carry.

Support does not have to start with a crisis. It can start with a GP appointment, a trusted conversation, a helpline, a culturally aware counsellor, or a community organisation that understands migrant life.

Beyond Blue, Lifeline, 1800RESPECT and the Australian Government’s multicultural mental health resources can help people reach mental health, crisis, domestic violence and culturally relevant support. Community support matters, but it cannot replace professional care when someone is at risk or in distress.