On Thursday, March 14, FMHI hosted an event called photovoice. Photovoice is community-based research. Participants photograph their experiences and identify important social issues that impact their everyday lives. This can lead to actions being taken to improve social conditions. Photovoice captures lived experiences and answers a research question. Our facilitator, Joseph Balabis, then had us break up into pairs. Then he posed the question, "Why are the SF Giants the best team in baseball?" Each pair was to come up with an image that answered this question with a small paragraph that explained our image. Some suggestions were fans' reactions, porcelain, pictures of the team throughout history, etc. The purpose of this exercise was to help us start training our minds to be able to answer a question through a picture. Joe said that the best answer is simple but direct and descriptive. Then he gave us our research question, which is, "What does mental illness or substance abuse look like in the Filipino community?" Our homework assignment is to submit 5 pictures to FMHI by April 4. I have not been able to take the time to think about this yet, but in the next week I will be blogging about my efforts. This is going to be a challenge for me because I have never done anything like this. I usually use my words to describe things, not pictures. So I'm looking forward to a very interesting experience.
Then, on Tuesday, March 19, I met with Jennifer Jimenez Wong who is a marriage and family therapist at the Fred Finch Youth Center in San Mateo for an interview. I met her through FMHI where she spends her time helping out. She works with kids on probation and also provides therapeutic behavioral services for youth ages 4-19. During our talk, I learned a lot about her work as a mental health therapist with a focus on youth. So first I asked her why she became a therapist and she told me it was because she received therapy when she was my age due to issues with her mother. She felt that therapy helped her start communicating more effectively with her mother. Also, when her mother was diagnosed with cancer, therapy was very helpful. So she wanted to give back and do the same thing for other people. I was very interested by this because most people that do mental health work have personal experiences that get them on this career path. It's really amazing to me because people who do this type of work, do it because they care which I think is important. Since Jennifer works with youth that get in trouble and sometimes get arrested, I wanted to know any similarities she saw between cases of Filipino youth. She told me that most Filipino youth engage in sneaky behavior, lie, don't follow the rules, run away, or steal. In conclusion, their behavior is more passive instead of agressive. This is due to high expectations/strict parents. In the Filipino culture, youth are raised to respect their elders. So when parents have super high expectations that cannot possibly be fulfilled, youth are not allowed to talk back or disrespect their parents. So Jennifer says that she tries to teach these kids how to be assertive, independent and be able to talk through their problems. Her chosen method of therapy is the cognitive behavioral approach and she believes a lot in empowerment instead of telling someone what to do. In fact one statistic she told me is that for every negative message you give a child, it takes 8-10 positive messages to undo that one negative message. Lastly she shared some challenges she faces as a Filipino mental health therapist. She said that sometimes Filipinos do not want to hear from another Filipino because it is too close to home. Also, since she is relatively young, older Filipinos may not think she is wise enough to help them. Additionally, Filipinos like to keep things within the family. Seeking outside help can be seen as a weakness. All in all, my talk with Jennifer was very enlightening and informative. I learned a lot that I may be able to use down the road when I become a psychologist.
INDIVIDUAL HOURS TOTAL: 3 hours
RUNNING HOURS TOTAL: 11 hours
