Funeral home workers worry about youths' mental health as repatriations to India increase

WARNING: This story contains distressing details

A funeral home in Toronto is drawing attention to mental health issues facing international students as it increasingly repatriates the remains of young men and women to India.

Funeral workers at Lotus Funeral and Cremation Centre in Etobicoke, Ont., say they believe some of these deaths are a result of suicides. Students and advocates say they are similarly worried about international student mental health and suicide rates, especially as the international student population from India grows, and say the issue demands action.

The numbers are murky. One student activist says it's problematic that federal statistics don't track deaths among international students because, otherwise, there will be way no way to find a solution. 

Lotus has, for years, been repatriating the remains of Indian citizens from throughout Canada at the request of the Consulate General of India and other members of the diaspora.

It used to repatriate no more than two a month — some of them students and some who had moved on to work permits. But since last year, that number has more than doubled, the funeral home says.

"We're about four to five [repatriations] a month right now," said president and owner Kamal Bhardwaj. Some months, as many as seven. Funeral workers have travelled as far as P.E.I, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and Quebec to gather bodies. 

Here's the breakdown of those repatriations, which the funeral home says have been mostly of young people:

Funeral home workers say they are troubled by some of the signs they're seeing on bodies.

"It's more of a visual. When they come in, how we see it and sometimes there's ligature marks on the neck," Bhardwaj said. "So that would be something that we think that's a suicide." 

While ligature marks can be caused by other incidents, funeral workers say, in other cases, staff see signs of drowning or drug overdoses, which could also indicate suicide.

Funeral workers could not provide specific causes of death due to privacy concerns, but they did tell CBC News that natural causes are usually associated with only one or two deaths per month among student and other young Indians. 

The rest include accidents, suicides, accidental drug overdoses, or other causes. In some cases, determining the cause of death takes time, as coroners' investigations can take weeks or months to confirm, according to funeral home workers. 

Funeral director Harminder Hansi says the home is on its way to outpace even last year's repatriation numbers.