Latest Headlines:   Community Awareness Needed for Suicide Prevention By ASHFAQUE SWAPAN Special to India-West Ten years ago, Santosh Unni, who was then 20 years old , was a very unhappy young man. In March, 1996, his best friend had died in a car accident. He went to Boston to stay with his best friend's brother to support each other, then came home in the fall of 1996. On Dec. 2, 1996 his elder brother Suresh had lunch with him. "We were supposed to meet up at my uncle's house later that night," Suresh reminisced to India-West during an interview. "I had to go to classes. My parents were going to take him. We were all going to meet at my uncle's house in Oak Park, Ill." But he didn't end up going with his parents. When his parents returned they found him in the basement, where he hanged himself. The trauma of the event shook Suresh as well. "For a while my life was not the best in that I wasn't dealing with it the best way," Suresh recalls ruefully. He said he "turned a lot to alcohol and drugs." He has seen a counselor since then. "I got sober and have been sober ever since." The trauma of suicide not only prematurely takes away a life, it also leaves deep scars in the immediate family, and researchers and activists say Asian American communities, particularly the South Asian community, need to get together and educate themselves about it. "To counter suicide what we need is to develop a resiliency that we don't seem to have to that degree," says Dr. Aruna Jha, a clinical psychologist based in Chicago who has launched the Asian American Suicide Prevention Initiative. She said AASPI is targeting the entire community. "It's not the one, two, three ten percent people who make an attempt that are our target," she said. "Our target is the entire community to say, 'Wake up! Let's work together!' That's where we want to head. We can't predict how long it's going to take to get there." Studies suggest that various groups of South Asians may be vulnerable to suicidal tendencies. A study sponsored by the American College Health Association, measured depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts among 15,977 college students in the academic year 1999-2000. It found that Asian American students in their sample were 1.5 times more likely to report serious suicidal ideation as compared to white students. In a study by Jha herself, she compared Asian Indian college undergraduates to white students on measures of depression, suicidal ideation and stress using a web-based survey. While white male youths are considered at higher risk of suicide, in this study there were no differences in suicidal ideation between white and Asian Indian students. Also, women were as likely as men to report suicidal ideation among Asian Indians. Family stress was associated with suicidal ideation in Asian Indians but not in Whites. Thirty-seven percent of the Asian Indian students reported clinically significant levels of depression. Another group that may be particularly vulnerable are South Asian women who are victims of domestic violence. Studies indicate South Asian women are more vulnerable to domestic violence to begin with. According to an NIH-funded study by Boston University researcher Anita Raj, "Intimate partner violence and intimate partner violence-related homicide disproportionately affect immigrant women. South Asian women residing in the United States appear to be at particularly high risk for intimate partner violence, with 40 percent reporting intimate partner violence in their current relationship in a recent study. Other research indicates that immigration-related social isolation, often resulting from the absence of both family in the United States and community support for intimate partner violence victims, and lack of awareness of intimate partner violence services prevent battered South Asian women from seeking help." Sandeep Bathala, an activist with the New York-based activist group Sakhi, recently testified at a N.Y. State Assembly hearing called by Assemblyman Peter M. Rivera: "A study on South Asian women in the diaspora indicates that high rates of self-harm could arise due to a number of precipitating factors. These factors can range from social, political and economic pressures to racism, poverty, language problems, isolation, health issues and familial problems." Bhatala put marital problems at the top of the risk factors that can lead to suicidal tendencies. " A few of the women in the study reported that their husbands demanded them to behave in a less Westernized fashion," she said at the hearing. "Also, they reported that their mothers-in-law interfered with the way they ran their lives and marriages. Such factors, along with arranged marriages, rejections of arranged marriage proposals and other marital problems place pressure on South Asian women, and thus were reported as precipitating factors for self-harm by the participants." There aren't specific numbers of suicide rates for Asian Indians in the U.S., but Jha is working on a study. "I have been funded at the state level and I'm starting with the Illinois mortality rates to break down suicide by ethnicity," Jha said. "So we'll be in a better position to answer that hopefully by the end of next year." However, the anecdotal evidence is pretty grim. "Since 2004, when we established (AASPI), in the Chicago area alone, I am aware at least of six young people dying by suicide, with the most recent one being just a couple of months ago," she said. Jha said there are specific cultural factors that affect South Asians, and the community needs to be educated about it. "We have some very unique cultural scripts," she said. "Particularly in reference to South Asians, we can identify statements in our own mother tongues be it Gujarati or Hindi or Tamil or what have you, where at the drop of a hat you say things like "Is se achchha main mar jaoo!" ('It's better for me to die!') and it's very, very intriguing to me that the context to statements like that are affiliated both with intense joy as well as intense sorrow. And parents don't hesitate saying to young kids, 'I'd rather you die than bring shame upon this family.'" Cultural sensitivity can be crucial for suicide survivors to feel comfortable talking about it. Savitha Viswanathan lost her elder sister Srilatha in 2003 when she committed suicide with an overdose of pills. She was 34. Savitha and her sisters were raised in a fairly liberal household, but after the suicide, when she got to know Indian another family who had lost a son, both went for a group session with Jha. "We drove to Chicago (from Pennsylvania)," she told India-West. "That was the first time my parents had ever done anything like that. I don't know if my parents would have seen her if she was not Indian. So I think it made a big difference that my parents trusted her on a level because the felt that she had some awareness of where they were coming from more so from someone local. I think that was true. She did have a better understanding of where they were coming from and she knew how to speak to them in a way that was constructive that didn't make them feel like she didn't understand." Jha said the community needs to get together not just for the sake of those with suicidal tendencies, or families who have lost a loved one to suicide, but for the better health of the entire community. "Suicide prevention needs to become a movement of the Asian American people in this country, which implies that every Asian should be aware of our inherent risk towards suicide, and of organizations like AASPI and the willingness to participate in activities that essentially promote resiliency." She said the entire community has its work cut out. "It's not just the family themselves, but it's a whole community - we are all contributing towards maintaining the problem by entrenching the stigma," she said. "Then we can start normalizing behavior patterns that are clearly dysfunctional." She is making an appeal to survivors, i.e. family members who have lost a loved one to suicide, to lead the path. She quoted Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, who has said: "I happen to bear testimony for those who have gone and for those who will come tomorrow, so that the tragedy doesn't get repeated again." Jha added: "So survivors, please come and join with us. We need you. You have your pain, but maybe, you can sublimate your pain and the knowledge of somebody else will act in a timely fashion, and somebody else's life could be saved by you coming up and telling your story. "When the community will respond with compassion instead of judging survivors they will come forward and empower us, all Indians." Savitha Viswanathan added that the gains could well go beyond helping suicide survivors. "I think it'll lead to just not people being more open talking about the issue of suicide but these other issues also," she said. "I mean, as a community we don't really talk about lots of different things, you know issues between the husband the wife, issues between the children and parents. Just in general you just don't see too many Indians going to therapy. There are a lot of people who want to talk about these things and they don't have anywhere to go." Interested readers can find more information about AASPI by sending an email to Aruna Jha at arunajha@uic.edu :by indiawest