The Cause Behind the Crown: Miss International Hong Kong Champions PSP in Honor of Her Mother

When people asked Clarisse Achard how her mother was doing, she always said the same thing: everything's fine.

For years, she had been watching her mother – her confidante, the one who always gave her strength and supported her in everything, her safest place – live with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). What started as seemingly minor behaviors – holding onto things for support, struggling to walk, what the family dismissed as a loss of confidence after a severe fall – quickly turned into a nightmare. Eventually, a doctor in France recommended further testing. The early diagnosis was Parkinson's disease.

Her father found a hospital specializing in Parkinson's treatment in Thailand and the family relocated. It was there that they learned what PSP was, and that it was not Parkinson's.

Clarisse had just moved back to Hong Kong, starting a new job and trying to understand from a distance what PSP actually meant. “It was very tough for me,” she says.

Her mother's condition continued to progress. She lost nearly 20 kilos. The family decided to bring her back to Hong Kong, closer to her siblings and to Clarisse. She has been there six months now, living in a care facility. Clarisse visits every weekend.

And still, she told almost no one. When friends asked about her mom, the answer was always the same: everything's fine.

Behind that calm answer was a different reality. Between her full‑time job in IT consulting, her pageant preparation, and visiting her mother every weekend – not to mention this charity project – Clarisse runs on almost no sleep. The stress and anxiety are constant. The weight of it all has taken a toll. There are nights when Clarisse lies awake, staring at the ceiling, running through everything she still has to do – and everything she cannot change. She has felt guilty for not being able to do more, exhausted from pretending to be fine, and at times, completely alone. She carries a weight that most people around her cannot see – because she has not told them. They do not always understand why she is tired, why she seems distant, or why she cannot always show up the way others do. And yet, she is trying her best to live up to people's expectations.

She has learned to carry this alone. She has smiled through dinners, laughed through messages, and shown up to work and pageant events while her heart was somehow broken.

“I didn't want to lie to my friends,” she says. “But it was very hard to say that yeah, my mom is sick.”

That began to change last October, when Clarisse was crowned Miss International Hong Kong 2026. She hadn't entered the pageant with any of this in mind. The idea was mentioned to her before – casually, by people she met along the way – but she had no real interest in that kind of exposure. Still, the thought quietly lingered. When she came across Miss International Hong Kong, she applied almost on a whim. She didn't expect to win.

As part of the title, each delegate champions one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. For Clarisse, the choice took no deliberation. She chose SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being. And she chose PSP.

“If I advocate for something, I want to advocate for something that speaks to me,” she says. “And nothing is more personal than PSP.”

For a long time, Clarisse kept everything inside. She told herself that she did not want to burden others, that she could handle it alone. But the silence became heavier than the truth. She wants to become a better self, an exemplary queen – starting with speaking those words for the first time, to a stranger. That was when she felt the first step toward freedom.

She found CurePSP and reached out. Now, for the first time, she is telling people. She has an ambitious plan for the year: a fundraising campaign, a collaboration with local coffee shops and bars to donate a portion of proceeds, and an art exhibition where donated pieces will be sold. She is building it largely from scratch, alongside a full-time job in IT consulting.

“I can count the number of friends I've actually told that my mom was sick,” she says. “So many of them still don't know.”

There are moments when Clarisse wonders who she is becoming. Between the crown, the cause, the caretaking, and the career, she sometimes feels like she is disappearing into her own responsibilities. But she keeps going.

That continues to change. As Miss International Hong Kong, Clarisse will represent the city at the Miss International finals in Japan this November, with PSP advocacy at the center of everything she does between now and then. She wants to raise funds for research, but she also wants the people closest to her to finally understand what she has been living with.

“I want to spread the word – not only raise awareness to strangers, but also to my surroundings, so that they know what I've been going through and what I'm struggling with right now,” she says.

Her mother can no longer walk on her own. Most days are now spent in bed, and speaking has become a quiet struggle. But when Clarisse asked if she wanted to appear in an advocacy video, the answer came without hesitation: yes. Because after all – no matter how much her body has changed – her mother will never stop supporting her.

“I don't know how many days my mom has left,” Clarisse says. “I feel like this is something that will always carry in my heart – and something I can be proud of. In honor of her.”

Follow Clarisse's journey here.