ABSTRACT
Miss T, a Korean American woman, aged 24, engineer in a large fi rm, had struggled with shame and depression since her teens. Growing up in a small town on the East Coast, she had been bullied and taunted by other kids who made fun of her because of her Asian looks. She grew up watching Korean soap operas in which all the young women were thin and beautiful and she hated her own features. Her parents fi rst sought psychiatric help for her at age 13 when she began cutting herself. Despite appearing quite sad, she denied feeling depressed, suicidal or irritable but told her psychiatrist that she was so anxious at times that she felt like jumping out of her skin. She felt that the only things that would help with the agitation were cutting or eating. Her concentration was poor and she couldn’t sleep. She ruminated. She was diagnosed with Dysthymic Disorder and Anxiety Disorder, NOS. A gifted artist, she had wanted to pursue an art degree but was told by her parents that they would pay for college if she majored in engineering or pre-med. After a negative job-performance evaluation, and with the break-up of a relationship with a Korean man that her parents had wanted her to date, she became despondent. In mid-winter one night after work, she came home and turned off the heat and opened all the windows in her apartment. Wearing her best outfi t, she got into the bathtub after swallowing stock-piled antidepressants, stabbed herself in the abdomen and slid down into the water.
