Mental illness, a hidden cost of immigration
When a young Chinese woman walked into a massage parlor in Brooklyn, New York, and asked about a job opening, the owner didn’t think twice. Gong Fanyue needed an extra hand for his business and the woman looked competent. But early in the interview, Gong found the woman to be a little strange. “She kept opening her hands like you would in a shrug posture and shaking her head at the same time. Though she spoke fluent English, she was not very coherent,” Gong later told the media.
The woman told Gong she came to the US with her boyfriend and has a good friend living in New Jersey. First she said she was from Hubei, a province in Central China. Later she said she came from Nanjing, a city of East China’s Jiangsu Province. Besides, she refused to disclose more information about herself and even declined to show her ID. Gong thought the woman was probably mentally ill and would come to harm if she were left alone to wander the streets. He agreed to take her in. She stayed in the shop for a week, refusing to shower or change clothes.
Eventually, Gong found her hidden ID which made it clear that Zhao Yayun was from Hubei and is a student of the New School University. With the help of the school and community organizations, Gong got in touch with her mother in Hubei and learned Zhao’s bizarre story.
She grew up with a single mom in a poor family. When she failed the Chinese national college entrance examination, or gaokao, her mother took out 20,000 yuan ($2,884) from the family’s savings to send her to an English learning school so that she could master a marketable skill. It was at the school that Zhao met many other students who went there to improve their English in order to study in the US. She became determined to go to the US too, even though she couldn’t afford the tuition.
In the years that followed, Zhao retook the gaokao, went to college and became an English teacher in Beijing. Then, one day in 2015, Zhao’s mother received a phone call from her daughter from the US. To settle in America, Zhao worked all kinds of odd jobs and toiled for more than 12 hours a day. She started to complain of fatigue. Half a year ago, she enrolled in a certification program at the New School. In July, she went back to China to visit her mother, who found her way of talking and behavior somewhat strange. The mother begged her to stay. But Zhao complained about the shabby conditions of their apartment. She went back to the US but apparently slipped into a worse mental condition.
Mental health problems among Chinese international students in the US have been rising in recent years, partly due to the sheer number of students and the bigger proportion of younger students. A survey by researchers at Yale University in 2013 found that 45 percent of Chinese international students at the school reported symptoms of depression, and 29 percent complained of anxiety. Suicide among Chinese international students in the US, rarely heard of years ago, has also become more frequent.
But it’s not only international students who face enormous academic pressure and who are far away from their families that can fall mentally ill. I recently visited a mental health services organization that helps Cantonesespeaking patients diagnosed with severe mental illness. Almost every one of the 17 patients there could trace the disease back to their immigration experience. A man fell ill due to pressure to make ends meet in a foreign country. A boy showed symptoms when he was constantly bullied at school because of his poor English. A woman started to be paranoid after sponsoring a green card for her husband, fearful that her partner is now free to abandon her.
The organization’s services help them live independently and prevent hospitalization. But severe mental illnesses have little chance of being fully cured.
These are stories that rarely come to the public domain – neither the patients nor their family members want to talk much about their suffering. But when we weigh the gains and losses from immigration we need to consider mental health as an issue. Many people see immigration as a gateway to a better life. Even those who are cognizant of the tough challenges they may face in a foreign country never think they could become mentally sick. The high cost of immigration is obscured in a hush-hush culture just like this.
Surely, not all immigrants end up in a mental health ward. And mental illness is often a genetic condition. But the rogue genes may stay dormant without harsh stimulation. For those interested in immigration, maybe it is worth remembering that traits like bravery, endurance and persistence sometimes are not enough to guarantee a smooth life.
The author is a New York-based journalist. rong_xiaoqing@hotmail. com