Clinical Health Psychology graduate student Abirami Suthan is passionate about mental health. Many times, people can point to an accolade or interest that influenced their career choice. For Suthan, it was a person.
When Suthan was an undergraduate student and a resident assistant at the University of Toronto, she held weekly meetings. One of Suthan’s favorite residents, CJ, who was an international student from India, would always be there and ready to help. Then CJ stopped showing up. “When I noticed a shift in her behavior, I reached out. CJ told me she was having suicidal thoughts, but was fearful to seek help. When she was in high school in India, a teacher she confided in suspended CJ after she shared that she was having these thoughts,” says Suthan, who helped CJ make a counseling appointment and walked her to the first session. “CJ has since graduated and is now doing well. Years later, her experience still affects me. Being from the South Asian culture myself, I know how deeply stigma shapes our responses to suicide. I needed to do something more to address this."
Suthan — who was raised by Sri Lankan parents and grew up in a South Asian American neighborhood in Texas — says there's a pattern of silence and shame around mental health in her community. To address this, Suthan became focused on educating herself and others.
Suthan, who started at UM-Dearborn in Fall 2023 and has an undergraduate degree in psychology and anthropology, is working on her thesis, "Cultural Identity and Suicide in South Asian Americans." She’s looking at age, cultural perspectives, mental health literacy, societal stigma and more.
To do this, Suthan — who’s advised by Psychology Professor Nancy Wrobel — created a survey that asks a variety of questions aimed at South Asian American-identifying adults aged 18 to 60 to gauge what people believe about mental health and suicide and how it’s tied to their cultural identities. Her research work is funded by an EXP+ Graduate Student Independent Research grant, which allows Suthan to compensate survey participants for their time.
“I believe suicide prevention work in a community starts with destigmatization and understanding cultural beliefs,” says Suthan, who chose UM-Dearborn for graduate school because of the faculty expertise and its clinical-based experiences. “For example, if someone believes depression is due to laziness and can be fixed through working harder — that’s one belief I’ve heard in my community — mental health literacy efforts can be made to explain how conditions are biological and psychological.” She’s also looking at how South Asian and American identities can be at odds with one another — one is more of a collective mindset and the other is more about the individual, respectively — and ways to bring those closer together. “I want to know, ‘How can we balance the norms of both cultures?’”
Suthan says her research didn’t start with suicide in mind. It began with a curiosity about mental health resources and how much they were accessed by South Asian Americans. “There was quite a bit of research on this and it says access is minimal because there are lots of stigma barriers,” she says. “Then I noticed a huge literature gap on South Asian American beliefs about suicide — there’s barely anything out there. I wanted to help find answers.” Data about South Asian Americans and suicide was so scarce that she looked to the United Kingdom, a comparable Western society to the United States, for statistics. Suthan found that South Asians in the UK were three times more likely to commit suicide and South Asian women were 7.8 times more likely to inflict self-harm than their white counterparts. “I’m not entirely sure why there is a lack of data in the U.S.,” Suthan says. “But it’s an issue that needs to be addressed.”
Suthan and her research took first place at the recent Three Minute Thesis Competition at UM-Dearborn. The competition, run by the Office of Graduate Studies, provides an opportunity for graduate-level students to share their research in three minutes or less in an uncomplicated and easy-to-understand way. Suthan will represent the university at the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools regional competition from April 2 to 4 in Indianapolis. “I’m looking forward to representing UM-Dearborn and having a larger audience to talk with about this research gap in the South Asian American community and what I plan to do about it,” she says.
Suthan says she has identified participants for her survey, which will be sent out soon. And she’s hoping the answers show trends that will give insight for next steps in building bridges between the South Asian American community and mental health literacy.
Suthan has seen how education can open conversations to create change in her own family. When she first told her parents — who lived through the Sri Lankan Civil War — that she wanted to pursue a career in psychology, they had negative feelings about her working in mental health. But, knowing her parents' story about leaving their country because of a war and relocating nearly 10,000 miles away with nothing but hope for a better life, puts things in perspective. “Honestly, it helps me understand why mental health was put on the back burner for them. It was just about survival — it’s hard to think beyond that when your basic needs aren’t being met. Many people from South Asian communities have this type of trauma,” Suthan says. “But once things have stabilized, there is an opportunity to go beyond the physical needs.”
Now, Suthan says her mother sends her journal and magazine clippings about careers in suicide prevention and mental health. “It was once a topic that wasn’t discussed and now she is sending me articles and making comments on how interesting they are. She is now my biggest supporter. And my father, even though he was skeptical when I first chose this career path, is one of my biggest cheerleaders,” she says.
Suthan says she has hopes that educating the South Asian American community in a way that embraces cultural awareness will open doors for more South Asian therapists, more research studies and an increased acceptance of mental health needs.
These would all help to realize the ultimate goal of suicide prevention. “I love my community and I come from some very resilient people. But, even when we don’t talk about it, trauma still exists,” she says. “Imagine how much better life would be if we took care of each other now — before it is too late.”
Story by Sarah Tuxbury
