Depression Part III: The Long Road to Recovery

My two kids and I was at the McDonalds drive through when I broke down crying. It happened so unexpectantly that it shocked all of us in the car. Me, because I was so certain I could handle one more thing my brother was doing or failed to do. My kids because they hardly see me cry. In between the first and second window of McDonalds, I try to hide my tears. While we waited at the second window, my daughter looked at me and said, “Mommy, you have done everything possible to help him. You are not a professional.” I responded,” I’m sad to see my brother like this. It’s a tragedy.”

By this point my brother had been living with my kids and I for over two years. The first year I was understanding, motivating, loving and caring in hopes that he would come out of his depression. Since I thought he was just dealing with depression I was very supportive and didn’t ask him to do much except take out the trash. He would stay up all night and sleep all day. I thought he was just depressed and I did not get suspicious that he was doing anything else until he started selling things from the house such as my wall decor, paintings, cameras, karoke machine, portable DVD players, movies and books. Then he would bring random people to the house at odd hours of the night after I went to bed. I found this out by accident because one night after 2:00 in the morning I woke up to go check on my kids when I saw someone walking out of his room. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back! I told him if he ever brings anybody else to the house had to go find somewhere to live.

It would be another year and another major incident before my brother was no longer living with me and finally getting the help he needed. He was arrested for forgery. I believe that arrest and time spent in the county jail, was a blessing in disguise because it was the first step to recovery. After spending three months in jail he was released to Community Bridges, who provides intensive care for people struggling with substance abuse and psychiatric problems. During his month long stay there, I took my daughter to briefly visit him when we drop off some cigarettes for him. She cried when she got in the car. She was sad to see her uncle a shell of his former self.

After my brother was released from Community Bridges, he went to live in a group home with seven other guys. The peer supported housing is managed by The Living Center/Friends in Recovery and their mission is: Friends in Recovery is an organized group of people in recovery from addiction, utilizing their collective experiences, knowledge and skills to assist others on their road to a rewarding and enjoyable life free from drugs and alcohol. It is an ideal place for my brother to be because he is surrounded by a great staff and support system. Since being with the organization, my brother is on the road to recovery. He has some good and bad days, but at least he is active and busy. We are just taking it one day at a time.  

Depression: Part One

Before the depression, the drug use, my little brother was happy, cheerful, giving, loving, hardworking, honest, and self-driven. He lived a purpose driven life. That was before depression got a firm grip on him and nothing I did, seem to break that hold. Gone was the positive and fun loving young man, in his place was someone un recognizable and at times unloveable.

As the student body president of his high school, my brother had it all, great friends and popularity. He was loved by his classmates, teachers, and school administrators. He could do no wrong and was the perfect role model for his peers. He was an honor student and highly active in and out of school. This success story continues all through college and med school. He graduated at the top of his class from the University of Texas Tech with his Doctorate degree in Pharmacy, the first one in our Laotian community to do so. Armed with two bachelors and a Doctorate he set off to do his internship in Minneapolis, Mn and that was when everything changed tragically, for him and my family.

The internship went well and he enjoyed working with the patients at the hospital. Upon completion of his internship he received and accepted a job offer as a pharmacist at Walmart. All the years of studying and working seems to be finally paying off. He no longer had to struggle to make ends meet. He was making over $120,000 a year and seemed to be doing well financially and emotionally. That’s why I was in such a shock and disbelief when I received ” the call”.

To this day I can’t tell you what time or day it was when my brother’s friend/co-worker called to tell me that my little brother was taken to the hospital. She wouldn’t tell me anything except where to call which I immediately did. However, I was more confused when I called and the nurse said what sounded something like “psychiatric ward”. I was momentarily caught off guard and at a loss for words and she had to identify herself a second time. I thought my brother’s friend had given me the wrong number! So I decided to make sure before I hung up and explained who I was and asked how my brother was doing, fully expecting her to tell me that my brother was not a patient there.There was a slight pause before she told me to hang on while she got his nurse. When his nurse came on the line, she told me that I couldn’t talk to him yet because they had to stabilize him first. By this point, I realized that my brother had tried to kill himself and was a patient at the County Medical Center, in the psych ward. How did he go from treating patients to being one? After I got off the phone I don’t know how long I sat there desparately replaying all of our late night conversations to comb for clues and serch for signs of trouble. All I could remember from my conversations with him was that he was tired from working overtime moonlighting for a second pharmacy. He never mentioned that he was depressed or that he wanted to kill himself. I kept asking myself, what happened that drove him over the edge? And how was I going to explain to my parents what happened if I didn’t even know myself!

Much later that night I called my parents and told them my brother had tried to killed himself. The first thing my mom angrily shouted was, “Is he crazy?!” She just didn’t understand what he had to be depress about and was angry at him for trying to take his life. She asked me for the hospital number but I told her he was not ready to talk to anybody yet and that I would let her know when she could call. Even though I promised her I knew that if my brother was going to recover, I had to keep my mom from calling him because she would end up stressing him out more from her scolding and interrogation. While he was hospitalized I kept my promise and told my mom point blank if she wanted him to get better she needed to leave him alone until he was ready to tell her himself about what had happened.

My brother did not get better after his month long hospital stay but progressively worse to the point where we had a family friend check on him daily and taking him food.This constant viglance would go on for several months until I brought my brother to live with me in hopes that I could shake him out of his depression. Looking back now, I can see how utterly naive and foolish that was!

*** Part Two: Intervention

Domestic violence among Southeast Asian women

*This was written by my sister, Khonnie who has worked in the social service field for over ten years.  This is her viewpoint.  I decided to post this because domestic violence is a problem in the Laotian community as well as the Asian community in general, but hardly ever openly discussed. Abuse such as domestic violence and rape are experienced by all cultures, some are more open than others about it.

I read an article a few months back in Audrey magazine that domestic violence is a huge problem for Southeast Asian women. The main reason is because when these women come over to America with their husbands they are at the mercy of their husbands’ actions because they are in a foreign country. They have nowhere to run and no one to talk to because they feel ashamed. In big metro cities like LA and NYC they have hot lines specifically for Asian women that are staffed with Asians who speak the language-Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese but not Laotian. I asked why this was and they told me it is a catch 22-there are not enough reports from the Laotian community to warrant a Laotian staff member. Domestic violence is something that frustrates me because of my strong independent personality. I have been lucky that I have never been a victim of physical abuse from the men that have been my boyfriends or husband. When I say that it frustrates me I mean the vicious cycle-the women usually stays with her abuser. I know the reasons why but I also know that some are able to leave. Although I have worked with victims of domestic violence-I have never specifically worked with a DV shelter or at a place where mainly the clients were victims of DV. I do not think that I can because I would not have the patience that is required to support the women (and men sometimes) through this vicious cycle and not get upset with them. I think it would break my spirit too fast and I would lose hope that I was helping them. So I admire the people who work day in and day out in a domestic violence shelter.

In a related issue-during grad school I volunteered at a rape crisis center in Albuquerque for about three months. The reason I did it was because for my stats class I wrote the hypothesis that if there was an Asian volunteer there would be more rape victims who are Asian who would seek the services from the rape crisis center. I researched stats on what the number of Asians who reported that they were rape and surprisingly it was a low number-less than one percent. Of course that is probably not true because I am sure it happens more than that but in Asian culture like other cultures this kind of shame would be too much for the family and community not just the victim. Sad fact but a real fact of life nevertheless. During my volunteer stint,I would be on call for one day out of the week and if there was a rape victim who showed up at the hospital a survivor advocate (they referred to rape victims as survivors) would meet them there. If they consented an exam would be done. As an advocate I was there for moral support and to give them resources that would help them. During that 24hr period at any time day or night I could get called to the hospital to assist the survivor of rape. It was heartbreaking to see the women and/or girls at times go through this. I could not imagine the nightmare they were going through and would go through for the rest of their lives. There were a few cases that it was just a teenage girl lying because she wanted to get her boyfriend in trouble or she did not want to get in trouble by her parents because she was at a party and had sex when she was not supposed to. Then there were cases that involved a victim of domestic violence but she would refused to file charges afterwards because she did not want to get him in trouble. She would go back to him because he said he was sorry or that he would change. One of the saddest cases involved a 3 year old little girl-she was molested by her grandmother’s boyfriend who was babysitting her. I felt so bad for the mother because she felt so guilty. It broke my heart to see this little girl who was helpless against her perpetrator-again when an adult decides to stay in an abusive relationship-she is adult enough to know the consequences. However when it happens to a child-that is the most cruel and vile thing an adult can do to a child. She was Native American so the reservation police were handling it. I never knew what happened to her or the other survivors after they left the hospital. I would call to check up on them after a certain amount of time and usually they would not return my calls. Which I understood could be for a lot of reasons. I had to quit volunteering after three months because between my school and full time job I could not do it any longer. I felt guilty though because I should of stayed on longer.

 During my volunteer stint, it was not surprising that I did not come across one Asian survivor of rape. One weird coincidence from my volunteering at the rape crisis center was that I did see one of them-a girl of about 12 after the one night where I held her hand while she was being examined. I was the admissions coordinator for the treatment foster care agency at the time and a few weeks later I get a packet from the psychiatric hospital for a possible placement. I go to meet the girl and the family and it was her. What was ironic was they did not recognize me and I did not let on that I knew them. However I told my bosses that this child would not be appropriate for our families who took in kids because of the history of the family. Not because of the girl being raped but by their history. This family had a history of suing people who took care of their daughters. And when the poor girl was at the hospital because she was raped by “a black man” on the way home from school-the story was fishy. First of all the nurse did not find any evidence of rape. Her parents were acting suspicious. Her mom was milking the system by playing up on her daughter’s problems so that she would be placed in residential treatment. She had another daughter who was already at a residential placement. And the dad was acting like he was coaching his daughter to say things such as she was raped by a “black guy” and the poor girl did not seem like she wanted to go along with it. I could not tell the hospital after I met with the girl and her family as to why we could not admit her into our treatment foster care agency. I felt sorry for her because clearly her family were using her and her sister to take advantage of the system. It was a miracle that the director took my word for it that this family would not be appropriate because all she cared about was the numbers we had in our program.

I hope domestic violence shelters continue getting the monetary support and volunteers that they need. One of these days I need to become a volunteer at a rape crisis center again. I hope more Asian women seek the help that they need if they are a victim of domestic violence and/or rape. However this is highly unlikely because Asians overall do not seek these types of services (rape crisis centers, mental health services).

Is physical, sexual, and mental abuse overlooked in our Laotian community? Is language or culture partly to blame?