Ballad Woodley-Hanan on his bed in the Vietnamese hospital.
Ballad Woodley-Hanan on his bed in the Vietnamese hospital.
After a stressful few weeks and a journey halfway around the world, a young New Zealand man is safe in a Hawke’s Bay hospital after being held in a Vietnamese psychiatric ward.
Twenty-five-year-old Ballad Woodley-Hanan suffered a severe episode of mania while overseas and was hospitalised in September - his father Dempsey Woodley rushed from Napier to Vietnam to be by his side while his mother Amanda Hanan set up a Givealittle to help with the cost of rescuing their son.
The Givealittle raised an incredible $27,995 to help bring Ballad back home and after several weeks of hell, Dempsey and Ballad landed safely last week.
“It was like mission accomplished,” Dempsey told the Herald.
“I look back at the last three weeks and just think ‘what the f*** happened?’ - I’m walking around like a zombie at the moment but I’m so relieved that he’s somewhere safe getting treatment and his life is not in danger anymore.”
The flight was challenging, as Ballad’s medication began to wear off and he became more manic as the hours ticked by - but the pair made it back to New Zealand, where they then had to get Ballad into a car and drive back to Hawke’s Bay.
Dempsey and Ballad in 2022. Photo / Dempsey Woodley
“He was quite gone by then, the medication had all worn off and he was not in a good way.”
Some quick thinking from Dempsey meant Ballad agreed to take more of his medication.
“I said, ‘hey, I’ve got, I’ve got a packet of smokes. I can give you one if you take one of those pills’. And he said, ‘oh, that sounds like a fair trade’. So he took one of the pills and that helped.”
His mother Amanda told the Herald it was “a miracle” to have Ballad home.
“It’s just such a relief to know that he’s home and safe and just having him back is awesome.”
Dempsey is glad Ballad is back on New Zealand soil, and despite the poor conditions in the Vietnamese ward, he said the care Ballad received was amazing.
“I am genuinely grateful that there was somewhere that he could go in Vietnam and I’m genuinely grateful for the care and professionalism of the doctors and the nurses there, the conditions were appalling, but they’re so under-resourced and, but the medication itself that he was given was pretty progressive.”
Ballad has been hospitalised in a Hawke’s Bay psychiatric unit for further treatment, which Dempsey says is the best place for him to be.
“It’s going to be a long journey for him but at least in Napier, he has extended family.
He’s got his mother and his father and his brother and he’s got aunties and his grandparents, all his grandparents are in Napier. The whole village is there.”
He was also full of praise for the support of the New Zealand community, who raised almost $30,000 to help get his son back home.
“[We are] incredibly grateful and appreciative that New Zealand has gotten behind us on that page.
He said the support from not only people who know Ballad but from strangers has been amazing.
“It was an enormous show of love towards him as a person. So not just strangers, but also all the people’s lives that he’s touched and them expressing support for him was really quite amazing.”
Amanda shares the sentiment, saying when she made the Givealittle she was trying to speak “mother to mother”.
Amanda Hanan and Ballad Woodley-Hanan together. Photo / Amanda Hanan
“Just the outreach of people have just been so incredibly kind and I really feel like loads of mothers have reached out to me and told their own children’s stories.
“I just love to hear all these stories and it’s been one of the most beautiful things and hearing that now they’re ok and things have worked out for them.”
Amanda said she reads every word that people have written to her, and she is extremely grateful for every single one.
“I just want to thank everybody so much for thinking of us and their kind words. I’m just so grateful for it.”
Vita Molyneux is a Wellington-based journalist who covers breaking news and stories from the capital. She has been a journalist since 2018 and joined the Herald in 2021.
