Trigger warning: This article discusses self harm and suicide.
Key Points:
Suicidal ideation and death within the immigrants community is something that needs to be openly talked about and addressed
South Asian immigrants, particularly younger generations, experience acculturative stress in response to immigration and put them at risk for suicide. However, older immigrants may experience more stress as it relates to finances and finding a job. This stress can also lead to suicidal ideation.
Many articles overwhelming suggest that, compared to natives, immigrants are at less of a risk for committing suicide.
Public health officials could be mislead into thinking that suicide within the South Asian community is not something to be concerned with. This is because people are less likely to open up about their struggles due to the mental health stigma in the South Asian community. Also the under representation of this population in research samples could mislead research findings into suggesting that suicide in this community is not as likely as in others
As established in the previous article, there are countless challenges that Indian immigrants face when moving to a new country. These challenges put immigrants at greater risk for mental illness. Something we did not previously discuss, however, was the danger of suicide or suicidal ideation as it relates to the mental health struggles of Indian immigrants.
Acculturative stress is one of the most widely cited explanations for suicide amongst South Asian immigrant communities. This stress is defined by the pressures that migrants may feel to “fit in” to the foreign culture and the wider society of the country they have emigrated to. Some things that may contribute to acculturative stress are language and/or cultural barriers, job insecurity and financial burden.
Certain young people feel the impact of acculturative stress as immigrants more than, say, their parents. The pressure to fit in and be like everyone else is heightened at that age, especially if they are in school and trying to make friends. In addition, there is often some extra pressure from immigrant parents on their children to maintain ties to their origin country’s culture, religion or language.
This makes it even harder for young people to feel accepted, rather than judged, by their peers in their new host country while also being respectful to their parents and their native culture. This experience can be quite isolating and overwhelming as well as invite unhealthy thought patterns that lead to suicidal ideation. A study done on college students in the United States found that, among many other triggers, pressure from their parents to remain connected to their native country contributed to suicidal ideation in Indian students.
Although younger immigrants may feel the impact of language and cultural barriers, adults have to contend with the job insecurity and financial burden that can accompany emigrating. This is also an overwhelming experience that can trigger suicidal thoughts.
A friend of mine who lived in an apartment complex just outside of Toronto once told me there was a period where many South Asian immigrant families, new to Canada, were moving into her building. She said that many of the parents struggled to find work and adjust to life in Canada. Some of their kids went to her high school but eventually had to drop out because their parents could not afford to send them there anymore. It was sadly not uncommon for the men in those families to commit suicide in her building in response to the pressures of emigrating. It happened often but nobody addressed it.
While we can acknowledge the increased risk that Indian immigrants are at for suicide, scientific research is tells a different story. Many research articles posit that immigrants are less likely to commit suicide compared to their native counterparts. However, I want to pose an explanation as to why this research may be misleading public health officials into believing that suicide within immigrant communities is not as pressing of an issue as it truly is.
South Asian immigrants are not adequately represented within the samples of many studies on suicide and mental health. Not only must we factor in the role of stigma and cultural beliefs that make Indian immigrants less likely to be both open about their struggles and seek out mental health support services, but we must also factor in the that South Asian immigrants have been incorrectly racially categorized in research in the past.
India is a large and diverse country which means that Indians can look physically different from each other depending on the region. This is the same of many other South Asian countries. This lack of representation in study samples can skew findings into suggesting that suicide is not as common among members of this population. American research has even found that there has been systemic undercounting of this population in the United States. Samples must be representative of the South Asian migrant community in research in order to confidently say that they are not at an elevated risk for suicide and suicidal ideation.
Ultimately the conversation around suicide within the Indian immigrant community is incredibly important. The heartbreaking deaths of talented Indian actors, Sejal Sharma and Sushant Singh Rajput, by suicide brought the conversation around suicide and mental illness to the forefront of many Indian households. Yet there is still a long way to go in terms of breaking down the stigma associated with these diseases.
References:
Suicide Among South Asians in the United States: A Growing Public Health Problem;
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