Family fights to get their troubled son home to NZ
Young Kiwi in Vietnam admitted to psych ward after manic episodes
The parents of a New Zealand man in a Vietnamese psychiatric hospital are fighting to bring their son home.
Dempsey Woodley travelled to Vietnam last week to support his son, Ballad Woodley-Hanan, who is in a hospital outside Ho Chi Minh City.
As the 25-year-old is a foreigner, he needed his father present to be admitted, as well as assistance from the New Zealand Embassy.
Woodley has been by his son’s side ever since, helping to care for him while he gets the treatment he needs.
While the hospital is providing care for Woodley-Hanan, it is not the best place for him to be, his father told the Weekend Herald.
“There’s no towels, the showers are cold.
“The places are not clean to a standard that you would have in a household in New Zealand, let alone a hospital. I wake up and there’s a massive, big cockroach crawling across the floor.”
Woodley-Hanan’s mother Amanda Hanan, who lives in Napier, has started a Givealittle page to raise money so Ballad and Dempsey can fly home to New Zealand.
She told the Herald she first noticed her son’s erratic behaviour three weeks ago.
“He just started to get more and more manic but because he had no health or travel insurance and no parent there, there was nothing anyone could do for him.”
His girlfriend messaged Hanan saying she was concerned as the pair were now staying in motels but kept getting kicked out because of Woodley-Hanan’s behaviour. Then, he disappeared. Hanan was worried sick, and when her son reappeared 12 hours later, he had a broken arm and lacerations, which was what prompted him getting to hospital with his father’s help.
“The minute Dempsey arrived in Vietnam it started to kick off,” Hanan said.
“The police had been called to where [Woodley-Hanan] was staying, because of his behaviour.
“So the police came and they called an ambulance and they made him get in the ambulance,” Hanan said.
Woodley told the Herald he believed he arrived just in time.
“He was going to die if I didn’t get him somewhere safe.”
Woodley was glad to be with his son and said the pair’s connection meant that he could understand Woodley-Hanan, despite the mania he was experiencing.
“He’s like a four-lane highway coming at you, jumping from lane to lane every two seconds.
“But the thing is because he’s my son and I raised him, I can make sense of it. I could see where he was jumping,” he said.
With his father there, Woodley-Hanan could finally be admitted to the psychiatric ward where he has been since last week.
The hospital is barren, only providing enough to keep Woodley-Hanan calm and sedated.
Every day, his father goes out to buy supplies, such as food and fresh drinking water.
Woodley said despite the scarcity of the surroundings, the treatment his son is getting is progressive, and the medication he is being given is the same as he would receive in a Western hospital.
Hanan was grateful to have her son off the street and safe.
“We believe that if we hadn’t got there that he would have died.
“He was so manic that we absolutely felt that he was going to get in danger, someone would attack or hurt him or he’d be run over, you know. We absolutely believed he was very close to being killed.”
With Woodley-Hanan now safe in the hospital, the next hurdle to clear is bringing him home.
Woodley said there were “a lot of moving parts” involved.
“The complexity of getting him out of hospital and on to a plane — that all costs money,” he said.
A spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed to the Herald they were aware of Woodley-Hanan’s situation and were providing consular assistance. However, they could not disclose more due to privacy concerns.
Hanan has started a Givealittle to raise the money needed to escort her son and his father back to New Zealand where he can receive more help.
So far, more than $20,000 has been raised.
“The kindness from everyone is just overwhelming,” she said. “It is imperative he gets out and gets somewhere — we would have never been able to get him out without that.”