COVID increases immigrants' mental health needs. How a Northland agency is trying to help

As he climbed the stairs to the community room at his organization’s offices one day last week, Sudarshan Pyakurel   noticed how quiet the building was, how empty.

He swept his hand toward the open and spacious second-floor of Bhutanese Community of Central Ohio (BCCO), a nonprofit whose building sits in the middle of an apartment complex on Tamarack Boulevard in the Northland neighborhood. And he reminisced about the days when the room would have been packed with friends from his community.

Maybe some would have been taking an English class, others would have come to practice yoga or — in pre-pandemic times — they likely would have gathered there together just last week as part of Diwali, the annual multi-day “festival of lights” that is the most joyous celebration of the year for Hindus.

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But because of COVID, this year’s gatherings for Diwali were mostly limited to inside individual homes. And for Pyakurel, who has made improving the mental health of the Bhutanese-Nepali community and removing any reluctance about addressing mental illness his life’s work, that was a worry.

“COVID shredded the last string everyone was holding onto,” said Pyakurel, the organization’s 39-year-old executive director. “These common events, these activities and gatherings, were a time to let go. Now, I worry people are suffering alone.”

Diwali is celebrated by various cultures and religious (including by Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists) and its party-like gatherings would have been just another chance for the community to talk openly about taking care of mental health, Pyakurel said.

Grim statistics show just how important those discussions can be: Suicide rates among Bhutanese-Nepali refugees are twice as high as in the general population. As many as 27,000 Bhutanese-Nepali refugees live in Franklin County — many of them in the Northland neighborhood — so addressing their specific needs must be a priority, said Durga Subedi, a mental health navigator with Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services, which has one of its several programming offices in the Northland area.

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Subedi, who was born in Bhutan and lived in a refugee camp in Nepal, came to the United States in 2009 and to Ohio in 2015. Because the adjustment to this country as a refugee was a struggle, she said, she committed herself from the beginning to helping meet her community’s mental health needs.

Like Pyakurel, Subedi said that without gatherings, outreach has been more difficult.

“It is a very hard challenge because if we have someone who is struggling through something, it is hard for them to speak because they may not want to speak in front of their family, and they don’t know to just make a call,” she said. “If we are not all together, we may not see who is struggling.”

Through the month of October, BCCO used a $5,000 grant from the National Alliance on Mental Illness to make a concentrated push to promote mental-wellness programming. It held events at churches and temples, and brought in a Nepali doctor to discuss mental wellness. 

A video made by Subedi was among the information shared. In it, she explained the difference between physical health and mental health, and spoke about how simple things like breathing exercises can help reduce anxiety and the importance of self-care.

“I am so happy BCCO is focusing on mental health and pushing information out,” Subedi said. “It is going to take us all in the community to help people.”

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For Pyakurel, this mental-health mission is personal.

He deals with an anxiety-disorder himself, and when he speaks to groups he introduces himself as a mental illness survivor. His late father, a Hindu priest, dealt with mental health issues as well, though he kept silent and it wasn't something the family ever discussed.

Pyakurel, who is now completing an internship toward earning a master of social work degree, said he will remain relentless in helping his community address mental wellness.

BCCO, which currently has three licensed social workers, hopes to start its own counseling services in the next year or two, he said.

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“We need people in the mental health community to speak our language, who understand our culture, who have been through the same traumatic experience that only refugees have,” he said. "We have to keep working on this."

This story is part of the Dispatch's Mobile Newsroom initiative, which is currently focused on Northland and operating out of the Karl Road branch library.

hzachariah@dispatch.com

@hollyzachariah