Overview
The evening's keynote speaker, Paraag Marathe, currently in his 25th year with the San Francisco 49ers and serving as President of 49ers Enterprises, offered a powerful counter-narrative to this silence. He shared a deeply personal account of his sister’s decade-long battle with depression and anorexia, which eventually took her life in 2005.
For generations, South Asian communities have built extraordinary lives of achievement, yet many have inherited a silence around mental health. This unspoken burden was at the heart of the second annual Rcoz gala at the Women’s Club of Palo Alto on May 30th, “Gametime for Mental Health” – an evening that served as a powerful reminder of why this mission cannot wait.
The organization was founded by Roopali Rajvanshy, who emphasized that mental health cannot be ignored, noting that “it won’t go away unless we get the right help.”
After six months of preparation, this gala brought together a community ready to move from silence to action, proving that through the work of Rcoz, they have truly “found our cause” in fostering healing and vulnerability, says Sruti Ramnath, Executive Director of Rcoz.
As Dr. Seema Sehgal, psychiatrist and board member, observes, this culture often teaches that “suffering must be hidden” and “carried alone,” leading many to “wear silence like armor”. This unspoken burden creates a significant barrier to care, a barrier that the organization Rcoz seeks to dismantle.
The cost of this silence is measurable and heavy, says Shreyas, Rcoz Youth Ambassador, highlighting a staggering statistic: “it takes the average South Asian 11 years to seek help”. This delay often leads to intervention only when a situation has reached a breaking point.
Dr. Apurva Bhatt, a psychiatrist at Stanford, notes that “less than 10% of the kids” she treats for serious conditions come to her before they have been “forced against their will to be sent into the hospital” during a crisis. For many families, “mental health conversations only ever happen after it’s too late”.
The evening’s keynote speaker, Paraag Marathe, currently in his 25th year with the San Francisco 49ers and serving as President of 49ers Enterprises, offered a powerful counter-narrative to this silence. He shared a deeply personal account of his sister’s decade-long battle with depression and anorexia, which eventually took her life in 2005.
Marathe admitted that for a long time, he “didn’t have the words” and lived in a state of compartmentalization, pouring himself into his job to avoid the “shame and my own embarrassment” of his sister’s illness.
Marathe challenged the community to realize that a high-profile career is “just what I do” and not “who I am,” asserting that true identity is defined by those we love and care for. He urged the audience to embrace the idea that “our imperfections are what make us human” and provided a roadmap for helping others through empathy, active listening, and persistent support, even when met with rejection.
Roopali Rajvanshy founded Rcoz to provide the “language for pain” that her own upbringing lacked. Through initiatives like the “Chalo Baat” (Let’s Talk) series, the organization creates “safe spaces that can foster honest conversations” where storytelling becomes a “bridge to healing”. These programs address critical issues, from teen suicide clusters to substance abuse.
Roopali recounted a success story of a mother who, after attending a community dialogue, realized that mental health struggles “won’t go away unless we get the right help” and was able to avert a crisis with her daughter.
The impact of Rcoz is perhaps most visible in the “High School Changemaker” program. For students like Shreyas, the program “reshaped how I understood mental health” by allowing him to view his own depressive episodes through a “South Asian lens,” contextualizing the “pressure, guilt, and shame” as a byproduct of his unique heritage. This education empowers the youth to become “flames of positive light and change” within their own homes.
This shift in the younger generation is triggering what Dr. Bhatt calls an “intergenerational healing”. She has observed that when children successfully navigate treatment, their parents, who may have lived with “untreated mental illness” for years, finally find the courage to “take ownership” and seek their own care. This reversal of intergenerational trauma allows the entire family system to “flourish”.
As the community moves from “intervention to prevention,” says Sruti, the mission of Rcoz remains clear: to ensure that the next generation grows up knowing that their minds matter.
Dr. Hari Nair, psychiatrist and board member, emphasized that “asking for help is not a weakness but a sign of strength and the most loving thing a parent can do”. By breaking the silence and choosing to act, the community transforms “unspoken suffering” into a shared journey of strength and compassion. Several attendees, especially South Asian men, shared how much they related to Marathe’s story and how it challenged the way we often think about success in our community.
Reflecting on the impact of the event and the community’s response, Rajvanshy notes, “We had a wonderful evening and were genuinely touched by the response. If people left the gala reflecting on their own mental well-being or feeling more comfortable talking about it, then the evening accomplished exactly what we hoped it would.”
