Older Vietnamese Americans suffer higher rate of mental health problems

In the first analysis of its kind for Vietnamese Americans in California, researchers found that Vietnamese Americans over 55 were twice as likely as whites to report needing mental health care, but were less likely to discuss such issues with their doctors.

"The message I want to bring across is that the medical community needs to realize that Vietnamese Americans are a high-risk group," said Dr. Quyen Ngo-Metzger, who led the survey. "I hope people realize that mental health is still a problem and not to view all Vietnamese as doing really great."

In general, Vietnamese Americans have assimilated quickly in the United States and have achieved success in business, education and politics. The study offers a contrasting view of the tough adjustments refugees have endured.

Many Vietnamese American refugees are suffering from problems related to traumatic experiences fleeing the Communist government after the 1975 fall of Saigon, Ngo-Metzger said. Along the way, families were separated, fortunes were lost, and many who fled by small fishing boats perished at sea. Former South Vietnamese military officers left behind were sent to Communist "re-education" camps.

When they came to the U.S., many had difficulty adjusting, Ngo-Metzger said.

The first refugees to arrive in the United States in 1975 started their lives in refugee tent cities, such as Camp Pendleton. Later in the decade, the so-called boat people arrived and political prisoners made up the last wave in the 1990s.

"They already had prewar trauma, and they come to the U.S. and it's a new country, a new language, and they have to find jobs," Ngo-Metzger said. "What we are finding is that 30 years after the war, there are still people having problems."

Cambodian Americans who fled after the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970s experience similar mental health issues, she said.