The death in January of Jaahnavi Kandula, a student from India living in Seattle, attracted international attention when she was struck and killed by a police officer responding to a call.
However, Kandula is not the only international student to lose her life in the United States this year. While her case received massive press attention because of the mistake of a police officer, others have died due to accidents, murders, or suicides.
They are a relative handful of the hundreds of thousands of international students who come to the U.S. every year, drawn by the hopes that a good education will lead to a brighter future. It’s unclear how many international students die in the U.S. each year, but it is certainly more than we hear about in mainstream media. We don’t know how many go unreported.
None of them thought about death when they came, but some of them may never be back home alive.
Several international students died due to external causes last year
Nandapu Devansh, from India, was shot dead by a robber in Chicago on Jan. 24, 2022. Devansh died only ten days after he came to the U.S.
Read more on Tribune India
Zhifan Dong, from China, was killed by her boyfriend, another international student, with a lethal dose of heroin. It happened in Salt Lake City, Utah on Feb. 11, 2022. The killer had informed a University of Utah employee saying that he and Dong intended to use drugs for a painless passing. The university later admitted its shortcomings in the response.
Read more on The Sacramento Bee
Varun Manish Chheda, from India, was killed by his roommate, a Korean student, in Indiana on Oct.5, 2022. The reason reamined unknown but the killer claimed that Chheda blackmailed him.
Read more on NDTV
Saiesh Veera, from India, was shot dead by a robber in a gas station in Columbus, Ohio on April 20,2023.
Read more on The Indian express
Camila Behrensen from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Pablo Guzman-Palma from Santiago, Chile, was killed by a man who set their apartment on fire. It happened in Kansas City on Oct. 22, 2022.
Read more on Associated Press.
Al Walid Al Gharbi, from Saudi Arabia, was stabbed dead by a woman who was a drug addict. It happened in Philadelphia on Jan. 30, 2023.
Read more on Gulf Today
International students took their own lives under big pressures
Two months ago, a Bangladeshi Ph.D. student committed suicide by jumping into the Wabash River in Indiana.
“My friends and I talk about wanting to die every day,” Xinyi Wan, an international student from China, joked. Wan is a computer science student at Northeastern University who has been looking for jobs for months.
It may be a teasing way to release their pressure, but reflects a common mental health condition among many international students.
Their mental health is impacted by various sources, including academic pressure, social anxiety, and loneliness
Financial pressure.
Although many international students are from middle-class families, the high exchange rate of the U.S. dollar still puts a lot of pressure on them.
“My parents always tell me that we are not wealthy. That pushes me to study hard, but sometimes I cannot meet their or my own expectation. Then I feel I am wasting money in the U.S.,” Sophia Du, an international student from China, said. Du is a sociology sophomore at Columbia University, who has been diagnosed with moderate depression.
Academic pressure. Studying in a second language is hard.
“Even though I have been living in the U.S. for six years, I still have hard times in classes,” Du said.
“I feel very frustrated when people start cracking American jokes that I cannot understand but I have to pretend to laugh in order to fit in,” Wan said.
Pressure from visa status.
“We dare not relax or take a break because we constantly fear losing our immigration status due to job loss or layoffs,” Wan said.
Dr. Jacqueline Blanco, a former psychologist at the University of Denver, Colorado, said, “[Colorado] has a very heavily white population on campus. but a lot of the international students were on my therapy caseload.”
According to a study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, International students are at greater risk of facing mental health challenges than local tertiary students considering they live away from home and navigate the new culture.
The report also mentions that international students are less likely to seek help because of language and cultural barriers. “Language barrier is absolutely a big obstacle in medical and mental health treatment, ” said Blanco, “many times, I work with immigrants from all over the world and have used a translator. This is something frustrating, but when you have no other option, that is one way to address that obstacle.”
Some universities like Harvard, MIT, and the University of Denver have started special mental health services and support programs specific to international students. For example, the University of Denver offers mental health resources in various languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Mandarin, etc.
However, many universities that don’t have a large international student population still haven’t.
For those who are facing mental health challenges but cannot find enough support from universities, there are other ways.
“if you can’t find one on campus, try applications like Meetup, where you can find a support group or even create one, ” Blanco said, “the support system is important. Staying connected to your former support network, like reaching back to your friends at home, staying in contact with your family, [or] preparing food that you are used to have at home.
