A July 2018 article in the Vermont weekly Seven Days calls attention to the issue of suicide in the Bhutanese refugee community, and discusses the work of Connecting Cultures, a program founded in 2007 by Dr. Karen Fondacaro, the Clinic Director in UVM's Department of Psychological Science.
This program was established to provide mental health services to refugees re-settled in Vermont. Through Connecting Cultures it became evident that suicide was a significant problem in the Bhutanese refugee community with Bhutanese refugees completing suicide at a rate almost two and a half times that of the general U.S. population. Graduate student clinicians and researchers, such as Jonah Meyerhoff, have been working with Dr. Fondacaro to further understand this problem and to offer clinical services to those refugees with mental health needs.