“When I look back on my path, I don’t think so much about what I’ve done, but how much more there is to do,” says Susan Chan, associate executive director of Hamilton-Madison House, one of New York City’s oldest non-profit settlement houses that provides social services for children, the elderly, the mentally ill, the unemployed and new immigrants and refugees in the Two Bridges/Chinatown community on the Lower East Side.
For Chan, who is in her mid-50s, the long path from her native China to Hamilton-Madison House, where she founded the East Coast’s first community-based mental health program for Chinese immigrants 24 years ago, has had many challenges and obstacles, continually testing her patience and determination.
Chan progresses rather like a tree, bending around obstacles instead of confronting them, pushing upward steadily but gently. And it is her lifelong passion to be of service to others that has been her guiding force.
“I’m a born social worker,” says Chan, smiling cheerily in her modest office. “Growing up in working-class neighborhoods in China and Hong Kong, I saw a lot of poverty and emotional hardship. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to help alleviate suffering.”
Although she volunteered for various social service projects during her high school and college years in Hong Kong and later worked with the Hong Kong Housing Society to relocate people in public housing and manage tenant affairs, it wasn’t until after she immigrated to the U.S. in 1966 that she found her calling.
After four years of struggle, working her way through low-paying odd jobs, learning a new language and culture, and gaining her master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of Social Work, she landed a job at Hamilton-Madison House as the first Chinese bilingual, bicultural social worker. At that time, many Chinese immigrants were moving into the neighborhood and needed assistance with basic readjustment problems: finding lodging, jobs and health care.
“I helped out wherever possible, offering counseling on everything from marital problems to landlord and tenant disputes,” says Chan, who opened a small office on Mott Street in nearby Chinatown so that her services would be more accessible to the Chinese community. The sign on her door read: “Come in if you have a problem.”
“Recent immigrants would come in with their suitcases looking for their relatives, and I’d try to find them,” she says.
One respondent changed the course of Chan’s life.
In 1972, a young Chinese mother came to her seeking protection. She feared that she was being followed and refused to leave Chan’s office. Chan referred her to a psychiatric hospital and contacted her husband. But no one could relieve her paranoia.
Eventually, she jumped from the roof of a Mott Street building, taking her 2-year-old son with her.
“That case really shook me up and got me thinking about the importance of mental-health services for immigrants,” says Chan. “I realized that there were a lot more Chinese people out there suffering from mental disorders, but they had nowhere to go.
“Among the Chinese, mental illness is a social stigma. Families hide those who have a problem because they’re so ashamed. And even if someone does seek professional care, there’s always the language barrier. So I decided I had to help these people.”
Chan began gathering data about people in the community with mental problems and discovered that patients were hidden in psychiatric hospitals for years who were never able to speak to a professional about their problems in Chinese. She visited neighborhood hospitals and churches in search of appropriate mental health services. As she suspected, they didn’t exist.
By 1973 she had started a small mental-health program in a kitchen at Hamilton-Madison House, along with another social worker and a part-time psychiatrist.
The following year, Chan moved her clinic to larger premises in a storefront on Canal Street, where she primarily catered to children with learning and behavioral problems. When she discovered that most of these children were affected by parents with emotional problems and mental disorders, she changed the name of the clinic from Chinatown Children’s Consultation Center to Chinatown Family Consultation Center and began offering mental-health services to Chinese people of all ages.
She also initiated the first mental-health hot line on the local Chinese radio station, counseling callers on problems related to stress, aging, depression, relationships and child care.
“We did a lot of education to remove the stigma surrounding mental disorders,” Chan says. “Gradually, more people started coming to see us. We tailored our counseling and treatment to each person’s needs, and if they required hospitalization, we referred them.”
The most difficult part of her job, Chan says, is recruiting, training and maintaining a bilingual, low-paid staff.
“I’ve lost staff because we couldn’t pay them enough. And it’s hard to find bilingual, educated workers. Since we offer services at low cost for those who wouldn’t normally be able to afford them, it’s always a struggle finding enough funds to keep ourselves afloat,” Chan says. “We have public assistance, but there are often budget cuts. So it’s all about mobilizing and organizing resources. I was fortunate to find others who share my vision and commitment. I didn’t do this alone.”
By 1983, under her leadership, Hamilton-Madison House’s mental-health services had expanded beyond the Chinatown Family Consultation Center into six additional facilities run by a staff of 40 social workers and psychiatrists. Among those is the first state-certified Chinese alcoholism outpatient clinic in New York City.
“It’s a dream come true for me to have a comprehensive mental-health program for my community,” says Chan.
“Clinical work is tricky because you’re never sure if you’ve achieved your goal. But it brings me great joy when patients come back, and I see how much they’ve improved. Whether it’s a woman who couldn’t cope because she was paranoid and is now working and taking care of her family, or a troubled child who’s grown up to find a job and buy a house, then I know I haven’t wasted my time.”
When Chan started the mental-health program at Hamilton-Madison House, its board feared that Asians wouldn’t use it, but 15 months later there were waiting lists, says Frank Modica, the agency’s executive director.
“Thanks to Susan and her staff, more Asians now view mental-health disorders as a disease rather than a stigma, and they’re not afraid to seek help. Susan’s commitment to the community is tremendous. She’s one of the top experts in Asian mental health on the East Coast.”
Yet Chan, the first Asian woman to receive an award from the National Association for Female Executives for her community service, is not one to bask in the limelight.
“People say `You’ve done so much,’ but I’ve learned so much from others,” says Chan. “This kind of work has also allowed me to learn a lot about myself, to mature and become more open-minded. I’ve had to depend so much on my inner resources. I know what I can do, but I also know my limits. The rest is in God’s hands. If you believe in brotherly love and helping others, you develop a certain humanity.”
Chan’s grandmother and the missionary school she attended as a girl in Hong Kong instilled in her the ideals that have shaped her life.
“My grandmother never had a chance to go to school; she taught herself everything,” Chan says. “She taught me about the importance of learning and education as a way to make myself better. And at missionary school I learned about Christianity and universal love.”
Chan was 10 when her parents and older brother immigrated to the U.S. in search of better opportunities, leaving her behind to take care of her grandmother in a remote village in southern China, where she was born. Soon after, Chan and her grandmother moved to Hong Kong to escape the Communist revolution in China.
In Hong Kong, she and her grandmother lived in a small house in a working-class neighborhood in Diamond Hill, where she attended high school and helped to organize relief efforts for fire victims.
“During the ’50s and ’60s, Hong Kong had a lot of housing problems. I saw a lot of poverty here, too. Many people lived in little huts on the hillsides, and fires were very common. There were certainly no diamonds in Diamond Hill,” she says.
In 1966, after two years of working for the Hong Kong Housing Society, managing thousands of housing units and tenants, Chan left Hong Kong to reunite with her family in Brooklyn.
“That was a very frustrating time,” says Chan, who dreamed of continuing her altruistic pursuits in America. “I couldn’t find a job or get into graduate school because I couldn’t speak English very well. My family told me to forget about social work. All the doors were shut. I almost couldn’t continue my dream, but I never gave up.”
“Susan is an example to everyone in the field,” says Elsie Delcampo, deputy commissioner at the New York City Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Alcoholism Services. “She’s one of the most effective advocates for the Asian-American community in New York. She puts in extraordinary hours and is always willing to go the extra mile.”
For the moment, Chan’s mind is turned toward her next hurdle: consolidating some of Hamilton-Madison House’s mental clinics in a new building in Lower Manhattan, where she plans to add services.
“If all this happens, I’ll be ready to retire and do something else,” Chan says, laughing. “When you wake up in the morning, it’s good to know that you’ve made a little bit of a difference.”
