When she finally found her child, the two could not connect emotionally and separated. Hoang also spoke of a refugee who spent many years searching for her daughter. “Growing up, the kids were brutalized by their dad.” “In his dream, he lost his weapon, and all he had left is his boots,” Hoang said. Hoang recalled treating a family in which the father, while sleepwalking in the midst of nightmares, would beat his daughter with his old army boots. The enduring signs of trauma can manifest themselves in violent or disordered behavior.Ĭity Halls die in darkness. Though the situation is slowly improving, only a handful of psychiatrists in Orange County are fully fluent in Vietnamese.įurther, Vietnamese people in Orange County are more likely than other Asians and ethnic groups to lack mental health coverage, according to a 2010 report, “A Look at Health in Orange County’s Vietnamese Community.” The Orange County Vietnamese population numbers 180,000, and three-fourths of Vietnamese elders speak little or no English.
Other groups believe that mental illness is like a curse from whoever you were in the past,” said Hoang,Īnother barrier to getting help has been the shortage of Vietnamese-speaking social workers and psychologists. “There are some people who still believe that mental illness doesn’t exist. He also champions mental health for Vietnamese people through his nonprofit organization, Viet-Care, in Garden Grove.īut PTSD is especially difficult to treat among the less acculturated older generation, Hoang said, because of reluctance to discuss traumatic experiences as well as attitudes about mental illness. My dad has it, I had it, I was a refugee,” said Paul Hoang, a licensed clinical social worker and the co-host of a Vietnamese community television program. “Post traumatic stress is very prevalent in the community.