A 3-week-old baby ended up dead in the courtyard of an apartment building in Queens. The police arrested the mother, Rashida Chowdhury, a 21-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant, on charges of second-degree murder. They said she confessed to throwing the baby out the bathroom window of her fourth-floor apartment because she thought the child was possessed by an evil spirit.

Beyond those stark facts, little is publicly known about the case or what led to the baby’s death early in the morning on Aug. 7. Still, the episode has resonated deeply among social service providers and advocates who have been trying to address mental health problems, particularly among women, in the growing Bangladeshi population in New York City.

Depression is widespread, these advocates and service providers say, often born of cultural and geographic isolation worsened by economic hardship and financial dependence on spouses.

“The women are becoming victims of everything,” said Rokeya Akhter, a Bangladeshi immigrant who leads the New American Women’s Forum of New York, a group that seeks to empower Bangladeshi immigrant women. “The women come to this country with an American dream in their minds and the situation sometimes is totally different. Women are going through so much frustration and they become depressed.”