Andrea Yu was born and raised in Alberta, but her parents came from Hong Kong. Yu says she grew up around conservative viewpoints of mental illness — and even all illnesses. The stigma was so strong that one of her aunts struggled to even talk about her cancer around others before she died.
“It felt very shameful. Cancer garners a lot of sympathy, and yet she still did not want to share that, let alone anything she experienced, mental health-wise,” says Yu.
Those early experiences made Yu want to change things for the better so that mental health would simply be an important aspect of a person’s overall health, something to be honoured rather than dismissed.
Now, Yu is a child psychiatrist and leads a team of 22 physicians as one of the youngest members of the CASA Senior Leadership Team while she also oversees 12 child and adolescent psychiatrists at Alberta Health Services.
She’s passionate about bridging the gap between different cultural experiences and Western medicine.
“That’s part of the treatment plan — looking at how clients perceive community supports; you’re looking at spiritual components and remembering, and recognizing and honouring cultural heritages as well. How do you treat someone as a whole?”
The most rewarding aspect of her job is seeing kids find connection and warmth with family. “They are actually able to have fun, which is actually huge in our program, because they’ve been through so much hardship.”
This article appears in the Nov/Dec 2024 issue of Edify
