Journey toward healing

Cambodian immigrant to speak in Stockton about struggles with PTSD

Sam Keo speaks earlier this year about his experiences in Cambodia and his subsequent battle with post traumatic stress disorder.Photo courtesy of Sam Keo

By Elizabeth Roberts

Record Staff Writer

May 21, 2012 

STOCKTON - Under the murderous Khmer Rouge that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s, it was his entertaining storytelling for regime leaders that helped save young Sam Keo's life even as his father died after being severely beaten and four of his younger brothers succumbed to starvation or disease.

Years later, safe in the United States but racked by violent nightmares and crushing guilt, he had a post-traumatic stress disorder breakdown and twice came within seconds of committing suicide.

This time, it was telling his own story, more compelling than his most fantastic of tales, that helped save him: His 2011 memoir, "Out of the Dark: Into the Garden of Hope," was written after years of therapy, medication and soul-searching.

At a glance

Author Sam Keo will speak, in Khmer and English, from 10 to 11 a.m. Friday at Stockton's Park Village Community Center, 3830 N. Alvarado Ave. Copies of his 2011 memoir, "Out of the Dark: Into the Garden of Hope," will be available for sale and signing afterward.

More information: (209) 944-1700.

While his book joins a growing body of memoirs recounting the horrors of life under the communist Khmer Rouge regime, his is one of the first treatment-based approaches aimed at addressing Cambodian immigrants' struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from those experiences.

Keo, a clinical psychologist for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, came to the United States from Cambodia in 1981 and has received congressional recognition for his work.

He will speak Friday in Stockton about his story and how PTSD affects Cambodian survivors and even their children and other family members.

Keo's talk and book-signing is sponsored by Park Village's Asian Pacific Self-Development and Residential Association, which serves a large percentage of Cambodians in the community. There are more than 14,000 Cambodians living in Stockton, more than 5 percent of the city's population, according to a 2007 U.S. Census Bureau language study, giving Stockton one of the top five Khmer populations in the nation.

"They hear the pains, the torturous stories and the fears from their parents. They witness their parents' reactions and they internalize these as if they are their own," he said of extended family members' struggles with post-traumatic stress.

Decades after fleeing the reign of horror that left as many as 2 million dead, most Cambodian refugees in the United States remain traumatized, a 2005 study found. Sixty-two percent had from PTSD and 51 percent from depression, as much as 17 times the national average for adults.

The refugees reported experiencing 15 of the 35 types of pre-migration traumas assessed: 99 percent nearly starved to death, 96 percent were enslaved into forced labor, 90 percent had a family member or friend murdered and 54 percent were tortured.

In Stockton, many PTSD cases were worsened by 1989's tragic shooting at Cleveland Elementary School, where Southeast Asian children made up 70 percent of the student body at the time and the five fatalities were either Cambodian or Vietnamese.

As a therapist working with Cambodian post-traumatic stress sufferers in the early 1990s, Keo was suited to help the community because of his own background combined with his clinical expertise. What he was not prepared for was how their tales would trigger his own PTSD, a phenomenon known as "counter-transference."

He began to be tormented by visions of his late mother and dead baby brother, seeing her reproachful eyes and the baby's wasted corpse. And he would hear her words:

"If you just gave your brother some of your rice, he would still be alive."

Constant nightmares, during which he sometimes acted out in his sleep and actually hit his wife, Bonavy, left him fragile and exhausted.

For the second time, he sped up a mountain, intending to leap to his death. It was a memory of something he had read in class that stopped him: "All babies are beautiful and every mother has one."

"Oh, my God, I realized, my mother must have thought that I was her beautiful baby. And what do I do now? Wanting to kill myself?" he wrote.

It was then that he began the long journey toward healing that ultimately led to "Out of the Dark," which took him 17 years to write.

"I believe God is giving me a mission to help them," he writes of fellow Cambodian sufferers. "I thank God, who has been watching over me and gives me strength to survive. ... Hopefully in the near future, I will be able to better serve my people and others who suffer similar symptoms."

His Christian faith has been central to his life, though he feels he cannot truly be healed and the best he can hope for is to manage and cope with his symptoms.

"The one thing that helps me to stay sane is God," he said. "I understand that he already has a map for my journey. The difficulty that I faced and I am about to face is the life 'speed bump.' It helps me to slow down and look for opportunity to do well for myself and people around me. With the power that be behind me, anything is possible."

Central to his recovery, too, has been sharing his story.

"I think that everyone should write one, whether you plan to publish," he said of writing such memoirs. "It is a family treasure. It helps our children and children's children to understand the reason we are here in America. ... Writing this type of book is a struggle. There were so many times that I plunged into relapse when I entered into extremely traumatic scenes. However, when it is all over, I felt like I have moved a mountain off my chest."

Indeed, contrary to what many who might expect of those who have endured so much suffering, a great many Cambodians are eager to tell their story; they feel they have to. Keo says this in a profoundly touching way as he recounts sharing his story aloud for the first time during a class presentation:

"I was interrupted many times with my own tears and choked up while telling my story.

"The professor came and put his arm around my shoulders. 'Do you want to stop now? It's OK; you can stop,' he told me."

"No, I want to finish it," Keo answers. "I have to be able to finish my story."

Contact staff writer Elizabeth Roberts at (209) 546-8268 or eroberts@recordnet.com.