By Ching-Ching Ni
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES -- Since she was a teenager, Stella Ho has wrestled with fainting spells, seizures and suicidal tendencies.
Doctors in her native Hong Kong struggled to figure out what was wrong with her. She was unable to hold onto her job as an office clerk. Relatives ostracized her and kept her away from family functions.
"They didn't realize I was sick," said Ho, 56. "They were afraid I would become a burden and disturb the family peace."
Ho didn't really understand her condition either until she immigrated to the United States in 1988 and began seeking help from the Asian Pacific Family Center. The Rosemead-based nonprofit is a welcome comfort for Asian immigrants battling mental illness, a little understood and even invisible health issue in parts of the community.
"Most people are very uneducated about mental illness," said Jeanette Choi, program director for outpatient mental health services at the center, about 10 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. "For Asians, it's almost taboo to talk about it because it's considered a stigma and connected to shame and weakness of personality."
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 1 in 4 American adults suffers from some form of mental health disorder. Racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to have access to mental health services and often receive poor care.
But little is known about the full scope of mental health problems in the Asian American community. What limited research there is tends to lump this diverse group into one ethnic category, said California Assemblyman Mike Eng, a Democrat from Monterey Park, who held a recent legislative town hall meeting to draw more attention to the issue.
"There are over 40 ethnic groups in the Asian Pacific Islander community," Eng said. "Our first goal is to show that this community is very diverse; each has its own characteristics."
Earlier this year, Eng released a report that was the first of its kind looking at the health profiles of the various Asian subgroups living in California. The study, done in collaboration with the University of California Asian American and Pacific Islander Multi-Campus Research Program, showed that certain groups are at higher risks of some illnesses than the rest of the population, while other subgroups have been rarely studied, if ever.
Counselors at the Asian Pacific Family Center say they see many Vietnamese immigrants who lost family members in the war. Some were soldiers who can't get images of dead bodies out of their minds.
"They suffer from constant nightmares, depression and mood swings," Choi said. "After some 30 years, they still live with the trauma."
Huong Ly escaped from Vietnam in a packed boat that took three months to reach Hong Kong. Then a teenager, she had seen her entire village wiped out by bombing.
There are many such as Ly who need help but must join a long waiting list at the center, which provides counseling, treatment and prevention services in nine languages and dialects.
It can also be difficult to find staff members willing and able to do the job, according to Terry S. Gock, the center's divisional director. Even his own parents, who are Chinese, did not understand why he wanted to specialize in psychology.
"A lot of Asians don't think psychology is a profession that would be productive or that you could even make a living out of it," Gock said. "So we have a hard time recruiting the best and brightest in the Asian community to enter this field."
At the moment, the center serves more than 1,400 clients, who are among the area's poorest residents. That leaves many working families with problems to fend for themselves.
Ho and Shirley Wong were patients who later found work at the center, helping manage its independent living facility.
"I think we should find people willing to listen to us and talk about these things," said Wong, who is from southern China and considers herself lucky to have received help. She credits her father, who, despite being in his 70s, was willing to drive her to her weekly treatments.
"If you don't talk about it, people don't know you need help," she said.
