Yoko Fung talks mental health

YOKO FUNG—she has a name as striking as her image, with her shorn head and avant garde fashion sense. She has worked as a flight attendant for 33 years and travelled the world, was a body builder and an iconic and fashion designer locally and abroad. But because of mental illness she has lost all these things, and almost lost her life.

Fung spoke about her being a “freak”, her failed marriage and mental illness in a candid interview at Newsday offices in Port-of-Spain.

Wearing moth/butterfly inspired glasses and matching dress, she noted she became famous (voice drops) “because of the way I look”.

“So every single day I’m a spectacle.

I call myself a freak and then people think it’s a negative thing calling myself a freak. So I say ‘okay superfreak’,” she said. She explained that a freak is a “uniquely fabulous individual who can kick a — and don’t follow the fluff because he has no desire or need to and I like that.” She said she gets a lot of stares and comments like “where the band girl?”, “you playing mas early” or “beam me up Scot”.

“Because it’s not easy being like this. You get a lot of stares, you get a lot of comments. And I’m like...I’m not going to take it on because if one million people see me maybe three will have a negative thing (to say). The rest of them will put a smile on their face. And that’s what you’re supposed to do — make people smile every day,” she said. She stressed, “This is what I am. I don’t pretend to be like this. Because look at me at 60 (this year).” Fung said her problems with mental illness began about 11 years ago when she started having strange physical pains.

“I first started getting ill in my last years of being a flight attendant and I hadn’t got a clue what it was. I thought something was crawling in my intestines, some snake or some dragon, it was so painful, not knowing that it was mental,” she said. “So I went through thousands of dollars of tests to see (what was wrong with me). And of course you’re a wreck because you don’t know (if) your number calling now because it was so painful. And every single day I would get it.” She had never been sick with anything before, noting that she always did the right things including meditation — she became an advanced student — and she also ate and drank better than many people.

“So I’m thinking ‘why me’...and you’re so upset. And you did all the right things. But it’s a mental (thing). I was pushing my body too much,” she said. Eventually doctors discovered that Fung had a mental illness and diagnosed her with panic attacks.

“And I didn’t want to get that any more. But I know now it was my lifestyle. My body had a cut-off zone.

How much one little human can do?” she asked rhetorically.

She noted that she had ten professions including being a flight attendant — she won a prize for being the best in the department; fashion designer — she managed a factory, stores and very many people — image consultancy for former Prime Minister Patrick Manning for 15 years; makeup artist; fashion model; showcase designer; and body builder.

Fung also recalled that as a flight attendant she would be in minus 30 degrees temperatures in some countries with five to eight hour time differences and then she would return to this “wonderful and beautiful country” and hot sun, and “surely that can’t be good for you”. She also had to take care of her two sons, who are now 34 and 36, both doing well and are respectable men. Now they take care of their mother, pay all her bills and make it possible for her to drive “a vehicle I cannot afford.” Eventually Fung was forced to quit her air stewardess job because she was not getting any better. She recalled trying to get up to go to work one morning “and I just passed out on the floor”.

She continued living in a “mansion” in Cascade with her third husband.

She said, however, “the promise of in sickness and in health was not happening”, that when she got sick, her marriage began to deteriorate as well.

Fung talks bluntly about her failed marriage, blaming it on unfaithfulness which she sees as an unavoidable destiny for not just herself but for women generally.

She said she saw “another side to her husband and “it devastated me.” She doesn’t plan on a fourth husband or “was-band” as she calls it.

Recalling the experience of her divorce proceedings, she said the local court system “mentally disturbed” her at a time when she was getting better.

After her divorce, Fung said she went from living in an 11-room mansion with a swimming pool and her organic garden to a tiny room in her son’s house with all her worldly possessions.

She said the loss of her garden, from which she would eat and drink and give away to others, “hurt my soul”.

She said she started to see psychiatrists at $500 per hour — about ten of them. After she resigned from her job, the company offered to pay for her psychiatric care and with that assistance, she sought help from more psychiatrists.

Being health conscious she was not fond of taking drugs.

With the loss of income, it became difficult for Fung to pay for psychiatric care. She learned about free psychiatric care in the health care system and although it was traumatic being a mental patient and having to go to St Ann’s Mental Hospital for an interview, she went through the process.

She was referred to the Barataria Mental Health and Wellness Centre on the Eastern Main Road and has been there for more than four years now.

She has had about 50 sessions with the psychologist and was commended for attending all sessions and always being on time. Fung said depression had driven her to suicidal thoughts, wondering the reason for her living — she was bored, she could not go out and work, nothing interested her.

“So (I felt) let’s end it all. I’m here to damn long. But I don’t feel like that any more. I feel like there is something around the corner again to look forward to then. It’s not the end of Yoko,” she said. Fung also said she converted to Hinduism, now visiting a temple in Cumuto. She prays often.

Fung believes her mental illness will improve and she does not mind taking “a little pill”.

“There are a lot of mental illnesses.

And people who don’t have any, they diagnose you and feel because you looking normal (nothing wrong with you)...a woman tell me once ‘not a damn thing wrong with you. Get over yourself eh’,” she recalled.

She remembered being livid for a week with that woman and thought “how the hell she could tell me that.” She said people were ashamed to go into mental health clinics and feel stigmatised, but analogised “if you have a broken leg, you would be ashamed to go in and get it cured?” “Come and get help. You may have a problem and you don’t know,” she added. Fung predicted that were more people seeking help for their mental problems, there would be less breakups in marriage and less domestic violence.

She said people see her at the clinic and thinking of her as a “big celebrity”, believe nothing is wrong with her.

“I want everybody to know that I have a mental problem.

And they figure...that I’m famous and rich. But I cannot work, I’m on disability and the food card.

And it’s not a rich lifestyle,” she said.

She said her eightyear- old granddaughter, Tomiko, helps her to keep going and was her “oxygen”.

Fung said she passes on her wisdom and knowledge so she will be thought of as a “woman of substance”.

Describing the last four years as the worst of her life, recalling that before, when people asked how she was going she would say “fabulous” but now she says “hanging in there”.

She believes that with professional help and treatment, she will “get back there”.