At least 15 international students have taken their own lives in B.C. in recent years.

More than a year after Postmedia requested the information, the B.C. Coroners Service data revealed male students accounted for 13 of the 15 foreign-student suicides between 2013 and 2018. Six of the suicides in B.C. occurred in 2015. Most of the foreign students and exchange students who took their own lives were in their early twenties, but four were teenagers.

And Andy Watson of the B.C. Coroners Service said the international-student suicide tally could be underestimated because of the way deaths and citizenship status are reported. “I would use language like ‘at least’ as a caveat.”

Foreign nationals face much different constraints than domestic students, according to specialists: Intense pressure to please their often well-off parents by earning good marks, by finding a job in Canada and often by obtaining permanent resident status in Canada.

While there appears to be little effort to track or directly respond to international-student suicides in Canada, a coroner’s report from Australia, which also has a large number of international students, concluded this year that offshore students are far more likely than their domestic peers to take their own lives without warning. The Australian state of Victoria discovered 27 suicides by foreign students in a seven-year period.

Kathleen Stephany, a Douglas College nursing instructor who used to be a coroner, said the B.C. Coroners Services’ tally of 15 foreign-student suicides is invariably low for many reasons, including that many suicides can appear to be accidents, such as car crashes.

Ali Najaf, an international student from Pakistan who recently graduated from Simon Fraser University, said the biggest stress for most international students in B.C. is navigating cultural shock, particularly learning English.

“Why do students have to go through so much pressure?” said Najaf. “There is a lot of pressure from the family back home. There is pressure to get a job, in part to help pay for their expensive education. And there is pressure to settle in Canada.”

Echoing a spate of news stories from Canada, Australia and Britain about foreign students killing themselves because they weren’t able to obtain permanent resident status after graduating, Najaf confirmed, “It’s really important for many to get the work permit.”

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The high rate of suicides by male foreign students lines up with national and international trends, which consistently show men are three or four times more likely than women to take their own lives. The World Health Organization also says suicide, globally, is the second biggest cause of death among young adults.

Alarms have been ringing about foreign-student suicide in the English-speaking world, which welcomes the vast majority of such students. The China Daily newspaper recently ran a story headlined, ”Suicide stalking too many Chinese studying overseas,” which detailed a spate of suicides among the 330,000 Chinese students studying and working in the U.S.

The newspaper, which is tied to China’s government, urged officials to find out why. Is it because of “fear of failing and disappointing their parents” or “the loneliness that comes with having to struggle on their own?”

After the 2017 suicide of Linhai Yu, a young Chinese foreign student in Richmond, China’s then consul general in Vancouver also expressed worry about suicide among the 53,000 Chinese students in Metro Vancouver. “Incident rates among the group,” Xuan Zheng said, “have been quite high.”

B.C. has the strongest concentration of foreign students in Canada and Canada accepts more of these students per capita than any other country, except Australia. There are roughly 130,000 international students in B.C., mostly in Metro Vancouver, out of a total of more than 500,000 in the country.

The B.C. Coroners Service did not release any data on the citizenship of students who took their own lives, the suicide methods used or the apparent reasons for the suicides.

However, the Australian coroner’s study found it was young men from Asia who were most likely to kill themselves, including because they want to keep poor grades hidden from their parents.

That’s in contrast, the Australian report found, to motivations behind suicides by domestic students, who were more likely to have experienced some form of abuse, discrimination or mental illness.

Even while the rate of suicide among international students appears to not be as high as the provincial average for young adults, Stephany, author of How to Help the Suicidal Person, explained some of the distinct forces squeezing foreign students.

In some cultures, she said, “suicide is an acceptable form of dealing with dishonouring your family. The pressure can be super-high on some students to succeed, and if they don’t, suicide becomes the default.”

Stephany, who has a PhD in counselling psychology, tells of a female nursing student who was the product of China’s one-child policy. “The pressure on her to succeed was unbelievable, because her parents told her they could have given her up for adoption and had a boy.” Struggling with English, the student crashed out of the nursing program, but eventually returned and passed.

Since Canada’s minister of immigration, Ahmed Hussen, proclaims that international students bring more than $32 billion into Canadian schools and the economy each year, Najaf asks why there is not more support to help them navigate a new culture, new schools and new jobs both during their studies and after graduation.

Australian researchers point to some creative responses.

Australian Dr. Benjamin Veness, a student health advocate, said some international students avoid mental-health services because of cultural stigma, which educational bodies need to help them overcome.

An Australian coroner, Audrey Jamieson, said properly understanding the phenomenon of foreign-student suicides is the beginning of prevention.

But higher education officials often don’t provide full reports on student deaths to coroners and generally appear reluctant to publicly discuss the issue. SFU’s media department, for instance, was unable to provide Postmedia with a staff or faculty member to speak about the particular emotional stresses faced by international students.

“There’s no quick fix” to solve suicides by students, domestic and foreign, says Stephany. But recognizing many students feel disgraced if they’re not doing well in Canada, she tries in her classes and speaking engagements to “normalize” open discussion of suicidal thoughts.

She encourages foreign and domestic students who are feeling distress to use Douglas College’s free counselling services, and to overcome cultural stigmas against seeking psychological help. “People are afraid to talk about suicide, because they think it will cause people to take their own lives. But the opposite is true.”

Since B.C. has one of the highest concentrations of international students in the world, and at least 15 of them have recently taken their own lives, there seems few better places where educational and government officials should develop and share expertise on this disturbing trend.

dtodd@postmedia.com

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