I'm Alex Bell getting to the point
and digging deeper into local issues
and right now we are witnessing
waves of refugee crises due to war
and persecution. Now in Ukraine,
more than 10 million displaced,
2.6 million Afghans are registered
refugees around the world and the UN
Refugee Agency estimates there are a
record 84 million forced to flee their
homes now April 30th just marked the
commemoration of the fall of Saigon,
now 47 years later,
UC Davis researchers.
We're focusing on the trauma
of the Vietnam War,
that it caused on Vietnamese
Americans with the hopes to help
other refugees in the future.
ABC 10s Van 2 joins me now
to help get to the point.
Thank you Alex.
Well, you know the story hits
really close to home for me,
so some of you may not know this,
but my parents were Vietnam War refugees,
more specifically boat people.
So here they are with my oldest sister.
When they got to Malaysia,
now boat people is the term for the refugees
who escaped Communist Vietnam by sea.
In the years after the fall of Saigon,
in Vietnamese, that journey is called
with being roughly translated.
It means crossing borders or crossing seas.
Now the war and the treacherous
journey towards a better life,
marked with traumatic events.
For the 1.6 million Vietnamese refugees
who resettled between 1975 and 1997.
So Alex,
I talked with two UC Davis researchers
who are paving their own paths
towards healing for the community.
Along a two mile stretch of
Stockton Blvd in South Sacramento,
you can sense the pulse of the
city's Vietnamese American diaspora.
Little Saigon. It was here during
the late 70s and 80s Vietnam War
refugees rebuilt their lives,
but before this vibrant
neighborhood came to be a period of darkness.
If we are ever in a situation
where we feel we will not make it.
She would kill me first. And then she
would go with me. It's really dark.
UC Davis graduate Dwynwen recounts
a suicide pact his mother made.
I think most people are shocked by that,
and they're like that's
such a bad parenting, right?
But I think if you're not in
that situation, you cannot judge
a situation of peer desperation,
he says, to escape Communist Vietnam.
Escape is the best word for it,
because you were persecuted.
You were haunted by the police.
After landing in prison six
times while trying to flee,
Nguyen says on the 7th,
try his mother, then 23,
paid a bribe to smugglers to
take them on the ocean voyage.
He was five years old.
Darkness is so prevalent in the memory.
It was a journey that took a year.
There was very little sunshine.
His family and 40 others
trekking through jungles,
wading through wave, whipping waters,
and traveling in the cover of night.
We were always kind of encased.
In kind of a whole they were filled
also with like horrible memories
of being like in a garbage truck.
You know of witnessing an execution,
but along the way moments of humanity,
his mother giving him her food
scraps a stranger hoisting him
above sea waters. Those are
the dominant memories of the trip.
Staying in a refugee camp in
Malaysia until they reached the
US embassy in the Philippines for
sponsorship papers to the US.
We arrived in the airport with three trash
bags and that was all of our belongings.
And that's how we started America.
But as a newcomer, new challenges
spending an afternoon with Lynn
and his fiancee, Lynn tells us he
didn't speak at school for two years,
though he did at home selective mutism.
They call it. Yeah,
I was kind of completely. Cut off
from any kind of cultural lifeline,
this early disorder. He later
realized was a symptom of trauma.
Definitely like the dominant
theme of refugees is trauma.
It's one of many personal
experiences that inspired Noyen to
pursue a career in psychiatry and
serve marginalized communities.
Realizing he carried his
shrama throughout his life.
Like many years, even decades later,
wartime trauma still present
and salient for many.
Goodnight Latino gangs family was
one of the first to leave Vietnam
with ties to the US embassy.
They were able to escape Vietnam a day
before the fall of Saigon on April 29th,
and they came to the US and were
sponsored by a church in Pennsylvania
and it eventually moved to New Jersey.
She's now under her
daughter's care in Davis, CA.
Anything of mine Doctor Wan Meyer,
an associate director at the
Department of Neurology at UC Davis,
says she began noticing changes
in her mother as she approached
71 of her major fears and.
Symptoms was just this paranoia
about the Vietnamese communists or
vehicle being outside of our house,
so she would always close the blinds,
close the windows,
it was like her memories of war
as a young woman were on repeat
pleasures with North Vietnamese regulars
in the central coastal plane near Bongsan.
She always talked
about how she had to run
underground when there were
bombing raids in Vietnam,
and so that's when I I felt like.
Something was wrong.
Her mother was diagnosed with
dementia seven years ago,
while their short term
memory is impacted. There are
long term memory stays intact
while researching caregiver stress,
she noticed troubling trends among
Vietnamese Americans like her mother.
Doctor Myers says Vietnamese Americans
are the 4th largest Asian origin group
in the US and are at a critical risk for
poor physical health and mental health.
A sizable portion are living with depression.
Due to war and resettlement,
Doctor Meyer is on a mission to learn more.
We really
don't know very much about
the prevalence of dementia or
Alzheimer's in older Vietnamese,
so I think that's really important for
API communities is to have a voice.
She's leading the first of its
kind longitudinal study of 500 N
California Vietnamese Americans over
65 through a $7.2 million grant from
the National Institute on Aging.
The goal is to examine.
Potential links between the
Vietnam War refugee experience
and cognitive disorders.
Their cognitive health will
be tracked over five years.
What is the prevalence of dementia
in this group, and what are the
factors associated with dementia?
Specifically, looking at
adversity and trauma early in life
through a Sacramento partnership,
some participants are being
interviewed at Asian Resources Inc.
Headquarters in South Sacramento
in the heart of Little Saigon.
Think that what we learn from Vietnamese
Americans might help us understand
other refugees and their vulnerability
to health and health disparities.
Myers says she was initially surprised
there's a wait list to join her study
as mental health is a taboo subject
in many Asian communities. I think
there is just that cultural value of
saving face saving face for yourself
or your family for your community.
But what Myers and Newlyn have found
in their work. Representation matters,
so I think when you open that door
when we do something like this,
if other Vietnamese people hear it,
they're like ohh wow, my story is being told
to feel like there's someone
else out there who's going
through the same things I'm going
to. I'm not alone.
And you know Alex growing
up in a refugee household.
It really is uncommon to talk about these
things like mental health and Vietnamese.
For one, there isn't a word
for mental health and #2,
you're really busy just surviving.
So it really is easy to fill alone.
So Doctor Meyer Newen say that they hope
their war can spread awareness about
mental health and cognitive disorders,
and they really hope it will help not
only just the Vietnamese American.
Community but beyond.
And if people do want to get
involved in this research,
can they still do that?
Is there a way absolutely so there is
the research in Sacramento and also
in San Jose where there is a huge
Vietnamese American community as well.
And Doctor Meyer has research on
Vietnamese dementia caregivers
that will soon be published in
the clinical gerontologist.
So we will be posting all those links
for people who are interested in
learning more on abc10.com links.