Meeting Trauma Head On

From a very young age, Shinichi Daimyo ’07 could sense a disquiet — one that was a deep as it was silent.

Much of his early life was spent among the Vietnamese boat-person refugee community in Los Angeles. His generation was the first in his family to grow up within the United States; his mother is from Vietnam and his father from Japan.

Daimyo admired the strength and resolve of these courageous individuals seeking better lives for their families. Many had fled political persecution during the Vietnam War, braving treacherous journeys across the Pacific Ocean in small boats.

“They sacrificed so much to escape persecution, but found themselves quietly suffering new hardships,” he said.

Silence conveys volumes, Daimyo understood. And yet what was loud and clear was that the territory of the past was treacherous terrain, not something to be carefully navigated, but a conversation to be avoided at all costs.

While at the time he didn’t have language for it, that unease and silence he witnessed firsthand remained with him well into adulthood. That collective reticence was an expression of trauma, he would learn later. With that trauma, he now understood, came stigma.

“They didn’t want to stick out in America, they wanted to stay quiet,” he said.

But avoiding what was embedded — the shock of the war, displacement and omnipresent worry; the very wound itself — would only complicate the trauma.

That restiveness would send him on his own path to both prove himself and make his family proud: He was a straight-A student as well as a popular, well-adjusted classmate who seemed to have a clear vision of his career path and next steps.

A transformative experience

Arriving at USC, Daimyo recalled, “I started out at in Marshall as a business major. Everything was going to be fine.” That was the plan, at least.

But something was shifting inside, he recalled. “I was at the point where everything didn’t feel right. I was just really starting to define who I was.” He was experiencing a different pull — one that landed him working with the Navajo Nation his sophomore year, a long-standing USC offering.

 It was the transformative experience that would put him on a new path toward the honors program in psychology at USC Dornsife. “From really old people to young children, the community rallied around them,” said Daimyo. “It was really the jolt I needed. It made me realize what I had to do.”

Working with the Navajo Nation, he began to see distinct parallels. As I learned about Vietnamese boat refuges and their fear, he began to understand that anxiety and depression unchecked was a time bomb. “When there is no one telling you that you have an illness, an illness that can or should be treated, you end up falling into the unknown,” he explained.

Studying psychology gave him both the language and wherewithal to address the problems head on — helping people take care of themselves and one another. It also gave him an awareness of far-flung communities that don’t receive the care they need.

“It was clear that patients suffering from mental health disorders are on the very fringes of society because we stigmatize them so much,” he said.

Reaching the global community

Since graduating, he has traveled to the poorest parts of the world, meeting with activists, health-care providers, and ministers of health, troubleshooting and strategizing. In that time he has become an expert in developing and implementing community-based mental health systems within the world’s most at-risk and underserved corners.

Recently named a recipient of a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, Daimyo said that the award will help support his work toward an MSN at Yale School of Nursing. Once completed, he plans to work as a psychiatric nurse practitioner. It will better position him to train the next generation of nurses working to address mental health disorders in low-resource settings across the globe, which he sees as the key to solving the significant burden of mental disorders globally.

“I’ve worked in some of the most remote and poor areas across the world, where the closest doctor is a five-hour walk away. And if you’re struggling with schizophrenia, you’re likely not going to make that walk. But no matter what, in every rural clinic I’ve worked in, there is always a nurse. With few resources and little support, they already do a heroic job in helping those who suffer from mental health disorders. We need to support these nurses who work tirelessly to help the poorest of the poor, and I believe raising the profession of nursing in low resource settings and providing them with advanced psychiatric and psychological skillsets will address this dire need,” he explained.

The story continues

He’s departing a full-time position as clinical program officer and program manager for mental health at Boston-based Partners in Health, a global health organization working to improve medical care in the poorest communities across 10 countries.

“It’s a difficult spot to move on from,” he admitted. “Really it’s my dream job. I’ve been the luckiest person in the world. The PIH platform is unique and allowed me to do what I could not do anywhere else: integrate sustainable mental health systems into a public sector primary care system for those often forgotten by society. And in so doing, we have to be respectful of local cultures. So this job in so many ways has brought together my experiences.”

This new chapter he sees simply as a continuation of a long story. “So much of what I do is really rooted in how I grew up and in the Navajo Nation. I have always been drawn to communities that have been marginalized.”

The latitude the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship will provide is invaluable. “It will give me the financial support to do what is important,” he acknowledged, but even more important, “I am surrounded by people who are immigrants and/or the children of immigrants who have made sacrifices. So really being able to support my vision of the world is the embodiment of my American dream.”