
Alumni Spotlight: Dr. Icarus Tsang
Dr. Icarus Tsang, a 2022 graduate of the Wright Institute’s Clinical Psychology Program, was born and spent his early years in Hong Kong. He is one of six children, with four older siblings and one younger sibling. When Dr. Tsang was around 12 or 13, the family moved to the United States. His parents were both Vietnamese refugees of the Sino-Vietnamese War, although Dr. Tsang was largely unaware of the trauma they had endured when he was a child. Later in life, Dr. Tsang learned that his parents suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their experiences and that inspired his early interest in the field of mental health.
From a young age, Dr. Tsang planned to become a Buddhist scholar and teach Vajrayana (or Tibetan) Buddhism at the college level. As a result, he was very drawn to the Buddhist studies program at the University of California at Berkeley where he majored in East Asian Studies with a focus on Tibetan, classical Chinese, and Japanese languages. Before Dr. Tsang graduated with his BA in 2008, one of his professors whom he considered a mentor advised him that he may want to consider a different path. “She had earned her PhD in Chinese literature from Harvard after almost 15 years of study, then it was hard for her to find a job,” he explained. “She wanted to make sure I lived a good life and made a good living, so I took her advice.”
After graduating from UC Berkeley, Dr. Tsang was looking for a new path. One of his friends was enrolling in the healthcare administration master’s program at Cal State East Bay, so he decided to do the same. At the same time, he began working at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco as a medical interpreter and later became the leader of their quality assurance team. Dr. Tsang found that the most difficult part of being an interpreter was having to break bad news to families. “Western doctors can be a little rough when it comes to telling patients that they are going to die soon - they don’t euphemize it, they say it very bluntly,” he reflected. “That was the biggest challenge for me, especially when the patients were children dying of cancer.” Dr. Tsang found this work to be extremely heavy and the stories of some of his patients will stick with him forever. Despite that, he was glad to do the work and provide comfort to patients. “I think that just having someone who can understand you and speak your language makes you feel so much better,” he shared, “especially when you’re very vulnerable and sick.”
From 2010-2013, Dr. Tsang worked as a post-graduate fellow at UC San Francisco, supporting a variety of research studies. He spent time as a research fellow in the departments of anthropology, history, and social science and the department of psychiatry as well as at their Helen Diller Cancer Center. At the same time, he began work on his own research study in partnership with a psychological anthropologist from Stanford University who was studying how people were able to hear and communicate with God. “I’ve always been interested in how people claim to see ghosts, spirits, and apparitions,” he explained. “I often heard people from refugee communities talk about how they were able to call on the gods when they were in distress and they would appear in front of them.” Unfortunately, the project was left incomplete due to funding issues, but Dr. Tsang really enjoyed his role in the process. “I interviewed a bunch of women who claimed that they were able to see this apparition and it was a very fascinating experience to hear under which circumstances and how this apparition, or this god as they called it, was able to help them to kind of move through their journey and get over situations,” he recalled. “It was really fascinating.”
In 2015, Dr. Tsang re-enrolled at UC Berkeley, pursuing a MSW in social welfare with a concentration on aging services and geropsychology. “At that time, I thought I wanted to go into social policy, and particularly gerontology policy,” he shared. “A lot of attention and money is focused on children, but not enough people go into the field of gerontology and it’s really needed because of the aging population.” Dr. Tsang loved the program at UC Berkeley and considered pursuing a PhD in social policy. However, once he began his internship at the Social Welfare Department, he became increasingly interested in mental health and began looking at PsyD programs in the area.
Dr. Tsang worked as a Special Bilingual Examiner at the San Francisco Department of Public Health from 2016-2022, administering oral and written exams for bilingual staff and developing and assessing the quality of their bilingual exams. He found that, because of the great need for providers who could speak different languages, many folks had claimed to have fluency beyond their capabilities, which could lead to misinformation being provided to patients. “I helped to create tests that determined different levels of communication, like communicating day-to-day information with patients versus communicating at a medical level,” he reflected. “I felt that I was able to make a difference there by helping them to set the standard for the Department of Public Health.”
In 2017, Dr. Tsang enrolled in the Wright Institute’s Clinical Psychology program. While exploring the options for PsyD programs in the area, he had heard great things from graduates of the Wright Institute. “They all talked about it being a really supportive environment and shared how much they appreciated the focus on cultural elements,” he recalled. “Coming from a refugee background where I view culture as very important, I thought this would be the right school for me.” Dr. Tsang loved his time as a student at the Wright Institute and formed close bonds with many of his classmates who he still has strong professional relationships with today. Looking back, he’s so glad he chose this program and considers it to be the best in the area.
During his time at the Wright Institute, there were two professors who had a huge impact on Dr. Tsang: Dr. Philip Keddy and Dr. Laaeq Evered. Dr. Keddy was Dr. Tsang’s instructor for the assessment series of courses. “His teaching style was excellent,” Dr. Tsang explained. “He was able to walk us through how to analyze assessment results and write reports in such a clear way.” Dr. Evered taught Dr. Tsang’s neuropsychology courses and fostered his interest in the field. “He instilled in us a sense of responsibility, teaching us that if we wanted to do well, we had to really work for it and study hard,” Dr. Tsang recalled. “That really motivated me and helped me to build a strong foundation in neuropsychology that has allowed me to advance myself in the field.”
Despite his initial plans to focus on working with adults and the aging population, Dr. Tsang’s first and second year practicum placements were at the Lighthouse Community Charter School in Oakland and at the Chinatown Child Development Center in San Francisco. “I guess it was all just destiny,” he reflected. “I got assigned to these placements and have continued to work with children, adolescents, and young adults ever since.” In his work with children, Dr. Tsang quickly found that it required something a little something extra. “It takes more than your knowledge and your expertise to work in these sites,” he explained. “It also requires a lot of love, especially for children, because they need a lot of love and a lot of care.”
For his third year practicum, Dr. Tsang worked at San Francisco Neuropsychology as a psychology trainee. He described it as a tough training ground and admitted that he had to spend a lot of extra time outside of his practicum learning to properly conduct the assessments and report the results. “It takes a lot of time, practice, mentorship, and guidance and I would say that I was very lucky,” he shared. “I had three mentors who were experts in the field and trained me across the lifespan, meaning that I’m able to see children and adult patients.” Dr. Tsang is still in touch with these mentors today and considers them to be good friends and colleagues in the field.
Dr. Tsang completed his pre-doctoral internship at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC)/North East Medical Services (NEMS) on their Pediatric Primary Care for the Child and Adolescent training track. He loved being able to work in a system that provided care to children with and without insurance and that encouraged interns to take their time and focus on the patients they were most interested in treating. “Being able to speak and converse in language that the parents understood allowed me to demystify a lot of the myth and stigma,” he reflected. “I walked away from that internship feeling really proud that I was able to make a difference in those children's lives and also help their parents to better understand and advocate for their children.”
The most valuable lesson Dr. Tsang learned during his time at the Wright Institute was time management and the impact of starting work early. “It’s so important to get things done early and stay on top of your schedule,” he explained. He also advises students in the Clinical Psychology program to talk to a lot of people when making decisions about their internship sites, noting that a site may look excellent on paper or on their website, but when you speak to someone who has worked there, they can give you the in-depth details. “I have many colleagues who applied to big name institutions, but weren’t happy there,” he shared. “I was really lucky - the sites I applied to weren’t considered top sites, but they were the sites I could learn the most from and get the best mentorship from.” Dr. Tsang also encourages current students to keep an open mind about their placements because you may find a new interest that you’re truly passionate about.
For his post-doctoral fellowship, Dr. Tsang worked at the Kalmanovitz Child Development Center (KCDC) at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) and, after getting licensed earlier this year, Dr. Tsang took on the role of staff clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist. In his role there, he sees patients and completes assessments, but is also very involved in community mental health projects. “I talked to the director about how there are some community sites in the area that aren’t getting any services and asked if we could think about starting a collaboration with them,” he explained. “We were able to do a collaboration with Asian Health Services in Oakland and also with the Chinese Hospital in San Francisco to see children at no charge.” Dr. Tsang noted that, while his role at Kalmanovitz hasn’t changed much since becoming licensed earlier this year, he now has much more confidence in his abilities as he works with school staff, psychiatrists, and other providers to support and advocate for the children and families he serves.
Currently, Dr. Tsang is enrolled in a clinical psychopharmacology master’s program at Alliant University. He was inspired to pursue this additional training because of his experiences working in the community and seeing that most of the medications his clients were taking were prescribed by primary care physicians, not by psychiatrists. “Oftentimes, they don't really have the training and I have situations where I feel like a kid shouldn't be on a certain medicine, but when I expressed that, I was not being listened to because I don't have any training in psychopharmarmacology,” he shared. “After completing this program, I don’t plan to prescribe medication, but I plan to utilize the knowledge I gain to advocate for my patients.” Dr. Tsang’s goal is to complete the program by sometime next year.
Outside of his busy schedule, Dr. Tsang enjoys spending time at his cabin in Camino, California. “I usually go up every Friday night and come back on Sunday,” he explained. “It’s my little refuge.” While there, he enjoys playing with his neighbor’s cat and watching horror movies. As a Buddhist, Dr. Tsang also enjoys practicing meditation and chanting to help himself feel more grounded and balanced.
Looking to the future, Dr. Tsang plans to continue working at Kalmanovitz or a similar clinic as a clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist, but would also like to pursue a doctoral degree in Chinese medicine. Sometime in the future, he hopes to open his own mental wellness integrative medical center. “I want to combine Eastern medicine with psychology and neuropsychology to provide a non-traditional approach to providing treatment,” he shared. “Instead of giving a child with ADHD medication like adderall or ritalin, I could prescribe Chinese medicine or acupuncture instead.” By combining his knowledge of Eastern and Western approaches to treatment, Dr. Tsang hopes to bring a more holistic perspective to the field.