Vermont's Bhutanese Community Among Refugee Groups Seeing Alarming Spike In Suicides

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Vermont's Bhutanese Community Among Refugee Groups Seeing Alarming Spike In Suicides

开云体育 | By Mitch Wertlieb,

Published July 25, 2018 at 4:07 PM EDT

The Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program office in Colchester. — The Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program office in Colchester requires overseas health screenings before refugees arrive in the U.S., but increasing rates of suicide among resettled Bhutanese refugees is alarming health officials.

More than 92,000 Bhutanese refugees now live in the U.S., relocated after enduring years of deplorable and often deadly conditions in refugee camps after being expelled from their home country. Now, federal health officials have tracked a troubling trend among this group of New Americans: a rate of death by suicide nearly twice the national average. And Vermont's 2,500 Bhutanese refugees are not immune.

Kymelya Sari with Seven Days with Vermont Edition about the challenges these refugees face in the U.S. and specifically in Vermont and the stories from the state's refugee community that has experienced four of these deaths by suicide since 2012, including two this year.

Here are some resources if you or someone you know is considering suicide:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
Veterans Crisis Line & Military Crisis Line: 1-800-273-8255, Press 1
Crisis Text Line: 741-741
Vermont Suicide Prevention Center:
In emergency situations, call 911

Broadcast on Wednesday, July 25, 2018 at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.

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Mitch Wertlieb

A graduate of NYU with a Master's Degree in journalism, Mitch has more than 20 years experience in radio news. He got his start as news director at NYU's college station, and moved on to a news director (and part-time DJ position) for commercial radio station WMVY on Martha's Vineyard. But public radio was where Mitch wanted to be and he eventually moved on to Boston where he worked for six years in a number of different capacities at member station WBUR...as a Senior Producer, Editor, and fill-in co-host of the nationally distributed Here and Now. Mitch has been a guest host of the national NPR sports program "Only A Game". He's also worked as an editor and producer for international news coverage with Monitor Radio in Boston.

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Matthew F Smith

Matt Smith worked for 开云体育 from 2017 to 2023 as managing editor and senior producer of Vermont Edition.

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