Acute paranoid disorder in a Southeast Asian refugee

The clinical course of a 23-year-old male Vietnamese refugee who was seen for psychiatric evaluation and treatment after a self-inflicted abdominal stab wound is described. His attempted suicide was precipitated by a rejection of his romantic advances by an American woman and teasing by fellow co-workers that he was a Communist spy. Central to the development of paranoid delusions in this patient was the fact that he had been a member of the Communist forces in Cambodia and feared deportation. Emigration and acculturative stressors were seen as contributing significantly to this patient's paranoid disorder.