(SACRAMENTO)

Duy Nguyen was only 5 years old when smugglers took him, his mother, his aunt and around 40 other people to a boat to escape communist Vietnam.

“It was a huge gamble,” Nguyen recalled. “My mother had actually tried to escape seven times without success, and every time she got caught, she went to jail.”

Access to the boat was difficult – passengers had to cross shallow but wave-laden water to reach the ship in the cover of night. By the time he boarded, Nguyen had separated from his family but was reunited shortly after the ship headed for the Philippines.

Nguyen is now a student at UC Davis School of Medicine, where he will graduate in May.

He is eager to share vital information about the refugee experience with behavioral health providers: Nguyen wrote about his saga which was recently published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

“The traumas of the refugee experience are real, but it is important to see what has been learned from these experiences,” Nguyen wrote in the newspaper, “Chased: Reflections on Escape and Safety.”

“For a year we lived like animals, seeking food and safety every day, running along hidden paths untouched by sidewalks or laws, our predators both criminal and police – we knew that we could be killed on sight,” Nguyen wrote.

“And, in fact, it is estimated that up to 70% of us are dead. It’s no wonder that even years later, in the safety of a new country, we took that hiding place with us, whether it was at school or in a doctor’s office.

The traumas of the refugee experience are real, but it is important to see what has been learned from these experiences. —Duy Nguyen

Fleeing Vietnam was a deadly experience for some

Nguyen, a fourth-year medical student and aspiring psychiatrist, was born in Ho Chi Minh City in 1976. It was just a year after the Vietnam War ended and the communist government made it difficult for citizens to leave.

Two family members died trying to flee.

But Nguyen’s mother was so determined to leave and never return that she devised a morbid-sounding suicide pact: in case they were caught, she would kill Nguyen and then kill herself. “We would die together,” Nguyen said. “If you were going on such a journey, you should have that kind of mindset.”

Nguyen’s mother was 23 when she paid the smugglers for the escape.

The ship’s captain’s plan was to head for the Philippines because the island country had the nearest American embassy. But the ship ran out of fuel and drifted towards Malaysia, where authorities intercepted the boat by firing shots and briefly imprisoning the passengers.

After boarding another boat, Nguyen, his mother and aunt arrived in the Philippines. They remained in a refugee camp for about six months while they waited for documents authorizing their resettlement in the United States.

They flew to San Diego and moved in with Nguyen’s uncle in nearby La Mesa.

The Challenges of Resettlement in the United States

Nguyen struggled in his new surroundings.

“We had lost everything; now we were lost in all. I was mute for two years at school because I was never taught English. I cheated when my first grade teacher asked the students to write their names and looked at what the boy next to me had written: Steve McNeely. I copied that. Then Robert Taylor, Seth Campfield: I also copied their names,” Nguyen wrote.

“I didn’t know how to write Duy Nguyen. I failed first year.

Nguyen eventually learned English and did well in school, but it was largely a difficult experience.

He later learned that the refugee experience is universal, regardless of whether newcomers are from Latin America, Asia or Africa. “All of them had some kind of trauma,” Nguyen said.

“You were kicked out of a chaotic society, diverged from civilization in a life-and-death struggle, kind of hiked, then came to America and had post-migration culture shock,” he said. -he declares.

The refugee experience is enduring, Nguyen said. It includes psychiatric disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), disruptive behaviors, depression, and even psychosis.

“I hope that if I were a child refugee in front of you, this would be the story you would try to tell me about myself. It would help me understand that I had persevered,” Nguyen wrote.

“When an athlete wins a championship or a woman gives birth, we look at them in light of what they have accomplished or created. We admire their determination and their will, and then we say, let’s now look at those wounds. »

Sharing her story with healthcare professionals

Writing about his refugee experience, Nguyen said, has been therapeutic. In addition to educating providers, Nguyen also wants to share her experience with young Vietnamese Americans who don’t understand some of the trauma experienced by previous generations.

Nguyen graduated from UC Berkeley in 2001 with degrees in psychology and literature and remained in East Bay where he taught English literature at San Leandro High School. He was also a theater director. After 14 years of teaching, he decided to apply to medical school.

Nguyen will learn next month if he is invited to a psychiatry residency program.

His mother and aunt, meanwhile, are college graduates and both are senior software engineers at Qualcomm in San Diego.

Looking back, Nguyen says the misfortune of his life was also his fortune, which he admits is ironic. Because he survived devastating circumstances as a child, he sees how hopeful life still is, which makes it difficult to be cynical as an adult.

Many refugees become humanists, valuing family and society above personal ambition “because we have been so hurt by life and have seen so many people sacrificing themselves for others”, he said .

“Children who are privileged and who have never had to deal with difficulties may also have difficulty understanding the pain of others. They may be blind to the fact that people can sacrifice for each other,” Nguyen said. “It’s not because they’re surrounded by selfish people, but because their circumstances never demanded it.”

In many cases, Nguyen said, their relatives or friends never had the experience of risking their lives or making sacrifices for them.

“They’ve never had a chance to see that they’re loved and because of that, maybe, the world can even seem like a less loving place. But it’s not,” Nguyen said.

“I remember my mother begging for me when I was hungry and giving me the food she received. I remember my aunt trying to give me the best seat in a garbage truck that was taking us to the refugee camp. I remember the man, a stranger, putting me on his shoulders so I wouldn’t drown when we ran away from the police,” he said.

“And those memories continually remind me of the kindness that surrounds us.”