Can

Short Synopsis What does it take to heal from mental illness when medications don't work? This documentary film follows 37-year-old Can Truong, a refugee who was among the millions of boat people who fled Vietnam in 1979, as he searches for healing, dignity and recovery from depression and bipolar disorder. Description/Treatment This 56-min documentary film "Can" follows 37-year-old Vietnamese-American Can Truong's journey of healing from depression and bipolar disorder over a three-and-half year period. This is one of the first documentaries that focuses on an Asian American with a mental illness. Can and his family were among the million or more Vietnamese boat people who fled the communist regime of Vietnam in the late 70's in overcrowded, unwieldy boats, enduring life-threatening perils in search of freedom. Like many Asian fathers with traditional Confucian ethics, Can's father invested his hopes and dreams into his only son and fled to the U.S. so that Can could become educated in the U.S.A. With the dreams and hopes of his parents, Can was a model student, excelling in many subjects and attending the University of Chicago in 1993 as a pre-med student. However, it was at the prestigious university where he was first diagnosed with his mental illnesses and forced to drop out due to his debilitating condition. Over a 12-year period, Can was hospitalized 6 times, tried more than 20 different medications, entered several clinical drug trials, and underwent 15 electroconvulsive shock treatments. Among all the ethnic groups in the U.S., Asian Americans are the least likely to seek mental health treatment. Research has shown that nearly 80% of the Southeast Asian refugee population in the US suffer from depressive, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorders because of the devastating experience of war in their countries of origin.